EMC's Acquisitions Add Up To Storage Services

A year after EMC Corp. acquired Legato Systems Inc. for $1.2 billion and nine months after its $1.7 billion purchase of Documentum Inc., the company has come out with integrated software that automates the movement of content across storage architectures as the data ages or its value changes.

Corporate Express could become more efficient, VP Aiello says.

Recent government mandates that require companies to make archived data readily available have made it more challenging for customers to manage data life cycles. With EMC Documentum Content Storage Services, customers can manage structured and unstructured data across any medium and define parameters for migrating information from high-cost Fibre Channel disk drives to low-cost tape.

That's helpful to office-supplies distributor Corporate Express Inc., which lets its customers access invoices from its Web site. The company has policies that let it move information between different media at certain stages and off its systems after seven years. Content Storage Services could make the company more efficient, says Wayne Aiello, VP of eBusiness services. "Some customers want us to archive their data differently, and we can't enter the attributes to make it happen," he says.

The software comes just in time to match changing requirements, Clipper Group analyst Anne MacFarland says. "Before, the data that was archived might as well have been dead, but now the government gives you two weeks to retrieve it," she says. "EMC now makes it easier for customers to set up policies for dealing with the pain."