EMC has expanded rapidly from a simple storage company, but to fulfil its potential it must integrate its many acquisitions and overcome the challenges of commoditisation and increasing competition in the storage market.  Having a quarter of the market gives EMC a lot of muscle, but even if the firm itself doesn’t think it has an identity crisis, the market does. After all, it is not the same company as it was even a year ago.

Before CEO Joseph Tucci took the helm in 2001, EMC was a one-trick pony. It made a healthy profit selling the Symmetrix hard drive array, but under Tucci’s leadership, it expanded into a diversified hardware, software and services company, just as other firms such as Cisco and HP have done.

Today EMC faces multiple challenges, not least of which is the commoditisation of storage and the gradual encroachment of other suppliers on its key turf. But those who ignore what the company has done in the past 10 years risk being blinkered to its future potential. EMC has expanded from a simple storage company to a firm that supports several of ITs major pillars. Identifying these pillars was insightful enough.  But buying and nurturing the companies that were at the forefront of those markets was gutsy and smart.

Yet EMC needs to work out where it want to go. The market has associated EMC with storage for over 30 years. Does it really want to be a storage company anymore? If not, then what will it be tomorrow?

According to Gartner, business spending on security software is increasing despite the economic downturn. Bucking the recession, growth of 18.6% for worldwide security software sales in 2008 to $13.5bn shows that security remains a priority for CIOs and IT security managers. Data security, compliance, privacy and increasingly sophisticated and targeted cyber attacks are fueling the growth of IT security software spending. Security firm Symantec continues to lead the market with a 22% share, followed by McAfee (10.9%), Trend Micro (7%), IBM (5.1%) and EMC (4%). Competition is fierce in this market and also having a whole raft of smaller vendors nipping at the heels of the largest vendors gives negotiators plenty of scope to play one vendor off against another. If security software is on your shopping list for 2009, then take the advice of Mark Bartrick, Managing Director of Silver Bullet Associates and make sure you use competition as leverage.