'We are buoyant about Iomega,' says EMC

Starting new year, EMC announced the appointment of Shubroto Das as chief operating officer (COO), EMC India and SAARC region. He leads EMC's sales team realizing the high growth potential of the enterprise and commercial markets in India. Speaking to Akanksha Prasad, Das talks about the road map ahead regarding EMC and Iomega.

You were recently roped in as the COO of EMC. What are your plans for the coming few years?

Shubroto Das: My road map is very much aligned with that of the company. We are focused towards grabbing more market share by taking it away from our competitors and continue standing as leaders. The IDC Q3 reports ranked us as leading company, so continuing with that we plan to work towards bringing in operational efficiencies. Our strategies revolve around the marketing, sales and channel operations.

How has been the performance of storage industry and what do market figures indicate?

SD: The storage market has remained robust throughout. What IDC reports state is that the overall external storage market has moved up by 18 per cent, while the storage software grew by 10 per cent. In terms of market size, IDC had predicted a manifold increase in the digital universe or global digital content from 180 exabytes in 2006 to around 1800 exabytes in 2011.

Which vertical/segments are bringing good business and what have been the driving factors?

SD. If we look at the domestic market, from segment, the mid-range market is picking up very fast. We see a lot of commercial and SMB space and that is where the demand of mid-range is, like disk-rays. Other segments which are going significantly fast are content management, security and storage management.

What are the various consumer needs in the segment? How does the marketing and positioning change?.

SD: At EMC, we look at all the segments from enterprise to as small as SOHO. The needs largely depend on what kind of solution the customers are looking into. The enterprise customers look at high-end storage solutions and implementation, the customers in commercial space typically look for mid-range of storage and space with back-up and recovery, and the SMB customers look at disk arrays with a backup solution around.

In terms of technology trends, enterprise are looking at de-duplication, cloud computing, virtualization. The commercial customer follow similar technology trends, but they largely look at enhanced disaster recovery, security-based solutions. In the SMB space it is normally working with applications for customers.

EMC is said to be an enterprise-focus company. Do you agree with this?

SD: The perception is that EMC is more of an enterprise-focus company, but we operate in all business lines, like the mid-range and the Iomega range for the SOHO and home. It is because our products have got more traction in the enterprise space, in comparison to other segments.

EMC recently got Iomega under its brand. What are your plans regarding that?

SD: We are very buoyant about the Iomega range. SMB and consumer is a very unorganized space, which makes it a very good opportunity in growth and expansion for EMC. Furthermore, Iomega has got a good brand recall in the SMB space, so it is good time to leverage on the products.