Technology companies need to be quicker to identify gaps in the modern market to maximise on their disruptive potential. So says Simon Walsh, COO of EMC in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, who was speaking to journalists as part of the company's Flash tour in Tel Aviv.
He said the emergence of 'software-defined opportunities' would see the most innovative companies overtake those that do not look to make any impact beyond traditional revenue sources.
Walsh pointed to ride-sharing company Uber as an example of technology's potential reach into sectors usually seen as out of their scope. "With Uber, you see how a software company has disrupted a legacy business - public transport - at a very fast pace. By bringing a widely-used and necessary service to your fingertips, they have brought great change in the way we see and interact with technology for key services."
For EMC, noted Walsh, innovation would be at the forefront of the company's growth strategy in coming years. "Although we are not planning to become an outsourcing or a systems integration company, spending on innovation is our way of getting the best out of technology available."
He said the company's approach was modelled on the IDC's "Third Platform" - an era identified as one which harnesses cloud, mobile, big data and social networking as primary catalysts for the next phase of technology innovation across the globe. "Our primary aim is to understand the customer and then relate technology to their particular needs," added Walsh.
Buying strategically
According to Walsh, EMC's acquisition strategy is a pivotal part of its plans to find gaps in existing and new market segments. "We want to continue investing in start-ups through seed funding and when we make acquisitions, we want to keep the founders in key roles to give them the platform to keep developing technological solutions."
Ehud Rokach, GM of EMC's flash-based storage solution XtremIO, says his start-up - which was bought out by the storage giant in 2012 - was founded on innovation through improved performance in the storage space. "XtremIO was established in 2009 and when approached by EMC, we opted for them because of their track record with handling acquisitions successfully."
XtremIO aims to maximise data centre productivity by speeding up application performance without compromising efficiency or durability.
Rokach said EMC had helped position XtremIO as a fast-growing product in the storage industry, while raising the profile of its "all-flash-array" solution that taps into a random-access manner of accessing data. "Although it costs much more than disk storage, Flash is faster and we want to leverage its nature to improve efficiency, maintain simplicity as well as flexibility in the storage space."
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