EMC showcases employee innovation at annual Innovation Conference

EMC Corporation, the world leader in information infrastructure solutions, recently hosted the third annual EMC Innovation Conference, to showcase the collective power of global community-based innovation.

Gerhard van der Merwe, EMC's Regional Country Manager: southern Africa, says the company engaged the creative and competitive spirit of thousands of employees across the globe to shape how it helps individuals and organisations transform the way they compete in order to save money, reduce risk, and create value from their information.

“With this conference, EMC continues to bring together the power of its more than 40 000 employees through its leading use of the latest social media technologies,” says Van der Merwe, adding that this year's three top employee submissions will be funded and incubated to determine their ultimate role in EMC's future portfolio.

“What originated three years ago as a vehicle to draw EMC's technical community into the innovation discussion, has blossomed into something quite viral and central to EMC's innovation process. Our aim is to bring into the innovation stream the broadest possible collection of perspectives. We're particularly motivated by ideas that help us move forward in strategic increments: those that deliver value today, as well as positioning EMC for emerging opportunities downstream,” he says.

The 2009 EMC Innovation Conference 'main stage' event was held at EMC's new Centre of Excellence in Bangalore, India, while localised events hosting more than 1 000 EMC employees, many including university research and industry speakers, were held at more than a dozen EMC locations around the world. Local events patched into Bangalore via videoconference to access keynote addresses and witness the final pronouncement of this year's “Top 3” winning Innovation Showcase submissions.

“More than 1 400 submissions from 19 countries were judged based on their potential to improve the world of information, breakthrough thinking, potential value created for customers, strategic relevance to EMC, and ease of implementation,” says Van der Merwe. “In addition to a traditional peer review selection team comprising EMC Fellows and Distinguished Engineers, for the first time EMC engaged the entire EMC community in the voting process. Through the use of an online community, employees voted and offered additional comments and recommendations, with approximately 23 000 votes cast by more than 3 000 EMC employees.”

Van der Merwe says the 30 Innovation Showcase finalist submissions for this year's Innovation Conference covered a broad range of business, process and technology categories, with first place awarded to an innovative new data storage and accessibility paradigm by Brian Gruttadauria, Michel Fisher, and Jonathan Huberman, the resulting product which will be brought to market soon for consumers and small businesses.

“Second place, and co-winner of this year's Environmental Sustainability award, went to a system that monitors an enterprise's carbon footprint by tracking and analysing energy-related events designed by Dan Bailey, Aldrin D'Souza, Madhu Manjunath, and Rob Masson as a joint proposal from teams in India and the United States,” he says. “The third place went to Dave Reiner's method for automatically adapting the configuration of a storage system to maintain optimal performance under changing workloads and situations.”

In addition to the three winners, Innovation Showcase submissions were selected for Honourable Mention and People's Choice awards. Separate awards were also presented for the submission that best incorporates environmental sustainability principles and most strongly supports EMC's Total Customer Experience philosophy.

EMC also recognised its most exemplary technical employees as part of its Corporate EMC Fellow & Distinguished Engineer Program that honours those individual technical contributors who have demonstrated outstanding achievement and a broad range of technical leadership across EMC.

“It's EMC's great fortune to have many enormously talented engineers around the world with innovative ideas and the ability to execute and contribute substantial value to our customers,” says Van der Merwe. “Through the EMC Fellow and Distinguished Engineer designations, we salute the importance of these world-class individuals to EMC's leadership and contributions to the world of information technology.”