EMC announced today a record breaking 41 total new announcements to a packed house of media in NYC. All the top brass of EMC was in attendance in what was billed as “Record Setting” themed event.

EMC didn’t hold back. They announced with big sizzle and grand flair a new refreshed high end and a completely new entry-level set of products aimed at the small medium business market.

Joe Tucci, CEO of EMC who also owns VMware, kicked it off yesterday when he presented to top industry analysts. Then he followed up today to the public media the complete portfolio of EMC products.

2010 was a good year for EMC both on the tactical performance (financials and product) and strategic positioning (owning VMware, M&A with Greenplum and Isilon). EMCs breath of solutions played into today’s big announcements.

In today’s big public event EMC had three basic themes:

1) Entry level solution with the VNX series,

2) VMAX high-end refresh, and

3) Big Data leadership with Greenplum, Isilon, and Data Domain. All of the announcements are set up by the company’s focus on the enterprise cloud computing megatrend.

EMC CEO Joe Tucci is clearly into the “cloud action”. He is visibly passionate about the migration that cloud computing is causing. Joe commented that the diversity of enterprise infrastructure makes the private cloud a very viable way to standardize and automate. At the end of the event kick off Tucci says “it’s a march towards IT-as-a-service.

One glaring observation is that Joe is very much proud of EMC’s crown jewel – VMware. Additionally, Tucci is stacking up more jewels in the EMC growth portfolio including Documentum, Data Domain, Greenplum, and recently Isilon. Tucci hinted to more acquisitions

Pat Gelsinger played prominently in his role as President of all EMCs products by taking the stage and delivering a command performance showing that he is fully up to speed on the EMC products and vision. All the new announcements have Pat’s fingerprints on them. It all smells like Intel in that performance is at the center of the positioning as well as an emphasis on product leadership. More importantly, Pat shows that he gets the role of software and big data as the hardware solutions get faster and smaller.

Software will be the key to success and EMC has virtualization and software layers wrapping around its core drive technologies. Something that will be very important as EMC “shrinks” the form factor and lower cost in the new entry level VNX.

The VNX series and the complete portfolio approach of EMC should put tremendous pressure on competitors such as Netapp and IBM.

VNX Series – combination or unification of two platforms into one integrated platform. Clarrion and Celerra combined with the latest Intel processor. The VNX is optimized for virtualization environments with over 60 points of integration with the focus on managing storage and VM resources in unison. Midrange is where the action has been but what’s staggering is that almost 50% of the market is under $100k.

EMC must have leadership in the entry level and midrange even if it’s simply packaging for ease of client adoption and channel sales. EMC for the first time in the company history has purpose built products and channels sub $10k enterprise class products. EMC is known for the high end in the storage market but not much in mid range and entry level. EMC will spend $20m in go to market demand generation.

Software focus is the heart of the EMC product direction from the entry level to the high end with big data. It’s clear from the EMC message that performance and simplification of product packaging is their goal. One core message with the new announcements is to consolidate the amount of software their customers will have to use. EMC is boiling it down to three simple bundles: Total protection, total value, and total efficiency.

EMC set some records today with the 41 announcements and they even broke a world record by cramming 26 people into a mini Cooper car all on stage live in front of the 300+ people in attendance. The event will continue tomorrow in London and Singapore. We’ll be there in person to report. Dave Vellante and I have a ton of video footage to share when we get back next week. So stayed tuned.

Congrats to Jeremy Burton, EMC’s CMO, for putting on a stellar event with sharp focus on product and marketing leadership. Lets see if EMC can gain some “record setting” market share gains across the board.

It’s clear EMC has put a stake in the ground on the marketing front and product packaging for customers. Certainly something the competition will have to develop a response.

We’ll be following them closely. Personally I think that EMCs strong sales force and newly developed channel will have a field day with the newly defined and launched products.

EMC and Joe Tucci are hopeful that the next record to be broken will be EMC’s stock price.