Tucci: 'EMC will go down market' -- right into your living room

Computerworld - LAS VEGAS -- EMC Corp. CEO Joe Tucci this week revealed some specifics of the company's long-expected plans to begin selling products to the small business, home office and even consumer markets.

"EMC will go down market," he said at the company's user conference here today. "We'll play at the big enterprise accounts. We'll play in the medium-size commercial accounts. We'll play in the SMB business. We'll want to play in the SOHO and play in the consumer [market]."

Tucci disclosed that the company plans to begin building consumer brands, but added that will be a gradual effort. "I'm probably not going to spend tens of millions of dollars [this year] to do that, but you'll see us begin." The new business will include products and services from recent acquisitions and from proposed buyouts, such as Iomega Corp., along with an internally central online repository that will provide consumers and home offices with mobile access to data.

In the not so distant future, EMC hopes its small business and consumer offerings include Iomega's small removable hard drives and NAS devices running on EMC's Linux-based LifeLine operating system, and the Mozy online backup and storage service the company gained last fall with its acquisition of Berkeley Data Systems.

Over the next several years, Tucci said he believes the average middle-class home will have up to a terabyte of data stored on electronic devices. He wants EMC to provide those users with mobile access to the data through an online "computing cloud" based on Web 2.0 hardware, software and services. Part of that technology will come from EMC's purchase of Seattle-based, cloud computing start-up Pi Corp.

Meanwhile, EMC plans to announce the availability of its own Web 2.0 software, code-named MAUI, this summer. The announcement will coincide with the launch of a major marketing push for its Web 2.0 hardware, a clustered NAS device code-named HULK. The hardware was announced at EMC's Innovation Day conference last November and is currently shipping.

"We want to have a play in the digital home, the digital small business in the future. No matter where you travel you have access to that data," Tucci said. "I know this is a great opportunity and one I want to capitalize on."

Earlier this year, EMC announced that it had agreed to acquire Iomega, which sells low-end desktop drives and portable hard drives. Iomega's business products include NAS equipment. The San Diego-based company's annual sales total about $336 million.

Iomega CEO Jonathan Huberman said his company can "inject the consumer DNA" that EMC needs to expand its reach beyond the corporate data center. "We've been around for 28 years. While we have a very strong brand, equally if not more important is that we have very strong channels," Huberman said. "That's what we bring to this equation."