Storage solutions provider EMC, integrator NEC and chipmaker Intel announced a Sharepoint configuration, fusing together tech from the three companies at the Microsoft SharePoint Conference 2011.  The offering uses EMC VNX for storage and the NEC Express Server configuration, powered by Intel Xeon E7 processors. A demo at the conference even managed to set a new record:

“The tested configuration enables 108 million database documents stored, searched, and retrieved. Together, EMC and NEC—armed with the latest Intel processor technologies—help enable SharePoint 2010 customers to scale densely with a cost-effective overall solution.”

The offering facilitates a 200 percent Sharepoint scalability boost, according to the companies.  The particular setup showcased at the conference used a VNX 5700 and NEC Express 5800/A1080a servers, which comes with a maximum capacity of two terabytes. The E7 chips Intel provided 80 cores and are designed for large-scale deployments.

EMC has been attending more than just one conference. The company is also involved with the Oracle OpenWorld 2011 gathering, where it announced a major update this week as well. Pat Gelsinger, EMC’s president and COO said that Project Lightning has already begun shipping to beta customers – a PCIe flash chip that’s designed to speed up large analytical jobs carried out by Hadoop and to tier storage.  The product, which was first announced in May, is a part of a broader strategy by EMC to build up a big data portfolio.

Bill Schmarzo, a senior exec at the storage vendor discussed and expanded on this topic during an interview at theCube.  He went into how EMC realized that it can do more than just store customers’ data but also help them extract value out of it, and also briefed us about the current state of the market. Schmarzo noted how enterprises are adopting to the new analytical tools out there such as Hadoop and the outlook of the big data industry, among other things.