Day 1 at EMC World was an exciting one, with an embracing of the independent analysis and the collaboration of independent media companies reporting on the happenings over the course of the day. Day 1 was all about the cloud and getting to the real cloud solution.  EMC is doing its very best to drive home the idea that there needs to be a shift from infrastructure to the cloud as well as more attention paid to data protection, as evidenced by the keynote by Jeremy Burton, EMC’s CMO who offered the prediction that one day every organization will have their own private cloud.

Burton continued by saying that it would be a pointless debate to discuss whether clouds would be predominately public or private, and that the cloud will likely be dominated by hybrid environments which, “we think will end up being the most pervasive model for computing, you will see application workloads [operating in] private clouds one day, public the next… and then move back.”

What about data protection in the cloud?

Yet, before the cloud can be seamlessly integrated into the business model, data protection must be addressed.  Data protection is an area that is going to explode and is a fundamental area of interest with a high demand of backup into the cloud while also keeping it protected once it gets there.  While initially data protection was a defensive move now it is more about growth and as reported on theCUBE, one of the fastest growing areas of the business with the goal of offering flexibility and choice for its customers.

Importance of data science

EMC also addressed big data and from a new perspective.  Joe Tucci, Chairman, President & CEO of EMC Corporation in speaking with reporters at EMC World has stressed the need to pay better attention to data sciences as the means of looking towards the future. Instead of focusing on the development side of the concept, instead EMC has turned big data into a business discussion and investing in the marketing and message of the service.  Right now EMC is not going after the developers, instead focusing upon the business developers to educate less about speed and more about data science.

SiliconAngle founding editor John Furrier said that EMC is not “there with real messaging and real deliverables to attract hardcore developers in hard data,” and while they are not a leader in big data development, EMC is focusing intently on the business side.  Furrier continues to say that he believes it is merely a timing issue, but from a developer perspective it’s really not just there yet.

EMC acquires Syncplicity

It was also announced during Day 1 of EMC World 2012 that the company had acquired Syncplicity earlier in the day, a file management system for the cloud that allows users to sync and share automatically, very similar to how Apple’s iCloud works.  This acquisition places EMC into a better position to offer its customers a security compliance product which should help it reach out to Fortune 500 companies looking to both use the cloud, and use it safely and securely.  Along with the news of this acquisition, there were other product updates that were unveiled by EMC.  (For more information on Syncplicity, follow this link.)

EMC made a series of five announcements yesterday, making a small dent towards the 42 it plans to release over the four day conference, leading with Symmetric VMAX and the launch of three new VMAX storage arrays.  The largest of the arrays, VMAX 40K has a scalability of 4 petabytes and “is designed for hyper-consolidated environments seen in enterprise data centers and cloud environments,” lending its support on the focus of the cloud.

Also announced is an entry-level mid-range VNX which offers file and block-level storage.  EMC Data Domain and Avamar updates were announced for the deduplication, backup and recovery appliances.  Sticking with the cloud theme, EMC Atmos is going to be upgraded, with the cloud platform which was first introduced in 2008 along with the Sumatra release.  Sumatra will increase the speed in which a large file reads and writes, as well as work with the Google Chrome browser which will give the company the ability to restrict who can, and cannot, upload and download objects.  Lastly, EMC announced EMC DataBridge which will make it easier for in-house developers to work together, create and publish IT operations reporting.