The EMC World Conference in Las Vegas saw another exciting week with its continued support for the cloud, as this is the year of the cloud,  and its call for businesses to embrace the new technology as being a vital resource.  The cloud was not the only exciting news though, with Jeff Kelly and Dave Vellante of theCube wrapping up the day’s highlights, seen here.

The theme that EMC has utilized throughout this conference is “transformation,” which is evident everywhere, from the t-shirts to the security guards and everything in between.  Transformation in the business realm is vital to a company’s relevance and ability to withstand tough times.  One example of EMC’s lead on this is the announcement of DataBridge, which will change how enterprise management is done.   Analyzing data for the competitive advantage is a new transformation that is still in its infancy, and is the most significant change we’ve [Kelly and Vellante] have seen in a long time with the impact on productivity being enormous.  Right now we are only seeing the very start of this realm, Google, Yahoo!, Facebook and others are still working on how to analyze data which then can be used to shift the business model to profit from it.  It’s a new system and still developing so it still isn’t widespread or fully developed. Data science needs to come together and everyone needs to fully collaborate and integrating this insight and then translating it into action.

Another area discussed by Kelly and Vellante is the data sciences segment, which they point out is a team sport which relies heavily on collaboration among many different sectors.  Kelly points out that by focusing on new training and development this seed that is slowly beginning to blossom will be a revolutionary approach to data.  This, Vellante points out, is a fundamental part of Joe Tucci’s (CEO of EMC) planning paradox.  Now two and three decades removed from the debacles of the 80s and 90s, business are now cognizant of the fact that they need to work hard not to make fundamental mistakes that can cost them in ways that IBM’s mistakes cost it; a company which one held two thirds of the market and brought in 50% of the revenue made fatal mistakes that nearly cost the company everything.  EMC is taking a leading role in this area and investing in new areas of growth and in using acquisitions to keep themselves relevant and on the top of the field.

There has been a new shift in enterprise technology that is changing the market and creating an exciting environment which is evident at EMC World.  As Vellante pointed out, there are five companies which are really driving the business, such as HP, Cisco and Oracle.  When one of these companies does something, for instance when Oracle purchased Sun, the market shifts and they are able to transform their product.  They have such large amounts of money available they can buy up smaller companies and then they’re able to transform the company, for instance into mobile and cloud areas they haven’t been involved with previously.  It’s a risky move, but if they pick their spots carefully they’re able to make huge gains in the market.  No more massive missteps like what dominated in the 80s and 90s.  It’s a more thoughtful approach to market opportunities and addressing the client’s needs; as well as a game changer from times past when it was small start ups suddenly exploding onto the field and changing the game.

On TheCube’s Day 3 Intro for EMC World, John Furrier, who was in San Francisco during Day 2 of EMC World for the hBase Conference, pointed out the incredible scale of EMC World and the volume of interviews and information that is being disseminated during the EMC World conference.  Yet, he also was focused on the exciting developments over at the hBase Conference, which is that no longer can CIO’s disregard the fact that hBase can do analytic storing but also in real time.  Furrier made a prediction that “real time is the future,” before the keynote address of Day 1, which Tucci made the same exact prediction.  Dave Vellante asked Furrier “What’s the buzz at the hBase conference about Hadoop being able to go real time?”  Furrier responded through predictive analytics and the research and work of his team that they’re able to better predict such trends, which was evident at hBase.  He spoke with actual customers, eBay, Turner and Fidelity for instance, and the consensus is that hBase is moving quickly towards production. In speaking about potential competitors to hBase, Furrier was quick to point out that hBase is similar to a suit tailored for a specific person, the programming can be tailored for the needs of the person.

In the preview to Tucci’s keynote, Vellante was able to get another view of the speech.  Tucci entered and instead of launching into a speech he says, “Let’s do it.”  The first question was on extreme IO and EMCs venture arm which has recently seen some changes.  Tucci believes that EMC now has all of the pieces and are able to, through acquisitions and development, to create a better more developed product.  He then spoke about SAP and the strategic nature of SAP, reducing their internal reliance on Oracle and instead focusing on SAP and a new SAP system that goes online July 5.  Furrier also addressed a serious issue EMC was forced to deal with when RSA was hacked and EMC embarrassed.  Data security is an important area for everyone, and Tucci addressed cloud security as being, “in the early minutes of the first quarter of the game,” admitting that they’re just getting launched in this area and it is still developing, as well as saying that “Open stack is way behind,” but with the increasing momentum growing behind it, the security element is still forming.