EMC World Summarized in Three Words: Dell, Cloud, LEAP

By Jim Lundy

I attended EMC World in Las Vegas the first week of May. It marked a turning point for EMC – as the merger approval with Dell is on the horizon. What struck us about the event was the amount of innovation that continues despite the merger and reorganization that is occurring. This blog summarizes EMC World in three key take aways.

EMC and the End of the Joe Tucci Era

The Joe Tucci era at EMC is over and it was a great run. Michael Dell gave Joe some great kudos and Joe got a standing ovation from the huge audience in attendance. Joe is leaving EMC in good hands as evidenced by the great customer turnout and the focus on provisioned clouds. See the short video below.

EMC World – Michael Dell Farewell to Joe Tucci from Aragon Research on Vimeo.

Additionally in Michael Dell’s short keynote, the big news was the new name of the combined firms: Dell Technologies. The combined entity will include Dell, EMC, Pivotal, RSA, SecureWorks, Virtustream and VMWare. There are sub-brands – Dell, Dell EMC, but we expect that to get sorted out as the merger nears.

Cloud Featuring Traditional and Cloud Native Options

The On-Premise Private Cloud story came in two colors – the Blue – Traditional, or the Green – which they called Cloud Native. What we heard was that Pivotal-Cloud Foundry  is one of the go-to Options for Dell Technologies. The other is an on-premise Provisioned Private Cloud that is powered by its VCE line of Converged Platforms. Given that EMC sells hardware, there was a lot of discussion about the new VX Rail hyper converged infrastructure. Our take however is that Pivotal is the secret sauce that will help to power Dell’s growth in Cloud.

LEAP: Moving Beyond Documentum

One of the bigger moves at EMC World was the announcement of a completely new ECM Platform called LEAP. To us, LEAP represents a new way forward for the Pleasanton based Enterprise Content Division. The components of LEAP include:

LEAP Courier – Structured Content Exchange
LEAP Snap – Easy Document Capture
LEAP Concert – Collaborative Document Authoring
LEAP Express – Mobile access to Content
LEAP Focus – an Improved Viewing capability on Mobile . This is a capability that we expect to be popular.

Additionally, EMC announced eSignature and Digital Transaction Management, via its partnership with DocuSign. As a major ECM provider, this partnership is significant and we expect that EMC will be able to use its LEAP Platform to deliver Advanced DTM solutions in conjunction with DocuSign.

Overall for LEAP, it comes at a time when there is speculation on the division being spun out of Dell. Our take is Content Management is strategic. If Dell wants to compete with other Tech Titans, such as Microsoft,  it needs application areas like Content Management to help drive adoption of other offerings, such as its Cloud.

In summary, EMC World 2016 was a large and well run event. It is clear that once the two companies are fully merged, they will be a strong contender in the enterprise for a growing set of technology offerings.