EMC World 2013 will be kicking off next week and it’s going to be all about the transition to the cloud, and fully leveraging Big Data.  EMC has been rather aggressive with developments in the  past 12 months, creating what Wikibon Senior Analyst Stu Miniman calls a “federation of companies,” comprising VMware and the newest addition, Pivotal.  The growing conglomerate is able to adopt startup tactics within a larger firm, helping EMC remain relatively nimble in a rapidly evolving marketplace.

One disruptor in the datacenter is software, and EMC along with its rivals are working to make IT infrastructure smarter, more efficient and less costly.  What will set industry players apart is their ability to scale these new offerings, applying emerging technology to an enterprise market that’s cautiously optimistic about the cloud.

There’s many questions regarding software’s role in the datacenter, the promise and burden of automation, and the true cost of transitioning further into the cloud, and we’ll be asking these and more during our live broadcast at EMC World this year.  For the third year in a row, theCUBE will feature top executives including fan-favorites like Pat Gelsinger, from EMC and its customers.  We’ll be diving deep into the technology behind the business, gaining firsthand insight from the industry’s influencers.

For those attending EMC World in person – our broadcast location is part of EMC SQUARE, conveniently located outside of the solutions pavilion.

 Watch live on SiliconAngle.com.  Send questions of Twitter using #theCUBE or directly to @furrier @dvellante @stu @jeffreyfkelly

Below, Miniman offers an overview of EMC’s current market position and his expectations for EMC World 2013:

Before the 2013 event arrives, let’s look at what happened at last year’s conference.  What was the hot topic?  What did EMC announce that made such a huge impact?

Here’s our EMC World 2012 recap:

EMC World 2012 was all about the cloud and Big Data.  During last year’s event EMC made 42 product announcements, which included the new and improved storage systems VNXe 3150 and VMAX 40K that deliver 50 percent higher performance and capacity than the previous generation of the solution.

EMC also announced the acquisition of Syncplicity, a file management system for the cloud that allows users to sync and share automatically, to offer a security compliance product to Fortune 500 companies.

Joe Tucci, Chairman and CEO of EMC stated that there is a need to pay better attention to data sciences as a means of looking towards the future, instead of focusing on the development side of this concept.

But the key takeaway from last year’s event was transformation, and we’re anxious to see where that leads us for 2013’s transitional era.  Wikibon analysts Dave Vellante and Jeff Kelly were witnesses as to how the event was focused on transformation.  From the announcement of DataBridge, which analyzes data for the competitive advantage, to the announcement of the new and enhanced products, to Isilon, and Tucci’s realization that data science should be the focus.

The guys from theCube were able to spend some time with EMC execs such as Pat Gelsinger, then President and COO of EMC now VMware’s CEO, who stated that EMC’s transformation in never over and sees the company’s main goal is to be the primary data center infrastructure provider for everyone from big to small, enterprise IT, and even on-the-ground solutions.

EMC BRS Division President William “BJ” Jenkins also dropped by theCube and stated that in order for the company to focus on delivering end-to-end hardware/software data protection system, EMC will be integrating its Avamar and Data Domain backup systems.