I should say I am seriously impressed with EMC. I am talking about their announcement of a new subsidiary called Decho, which combines the two acquisitions they had made in the last one year: the online backup services startup, Mozy, and the Personal
Information Management startup, Pi Corp. When EMC acquired Mozy I had thought EMC would use Mozy’s technology to come up with some cloud storage initiative for the enterprise and the mid-market segment. I also felt that would take away Mozy’s focus on consumer and small and medium business segment. Of course, it was probably wishful thinking too-because with our StoreGrid online backup solution we focus on the SMB market segment too.
We actually do not compete with Mozy head on as our focus has been on enabling MSPs and IT Solution providers to host and offer their own online backup service to their SMB customers. Now that EMC is creating a new subsidiary, Decho, which will exclusively focus on the consumer (and the SMB ???) segment we need to take note of that and be prepared to start competing with them sometime in the future. But it is always good to have a formidable competitor. That will help us motivate ourselves to think better and work harder to make StoreGrid a better platform for our partners to offer an online backup service.
Coming back to why I am impressed with EMC! Being such a large company primarily focusing on the enterprise and mid-market segment, it would have been an execution disaster if they had tried to keep Mozy ‘in house’ and focus on the consumer/SMB segment. Chuck Hollis, EMC’s VP, Global Marketing, puts it succinctly in his blog post – as to why this is a great move by EMC.
“I think the decision to create a separate standalone entity speaks volumes as to how EMC’s thinking has matured: this is a market that’s important to EMC, we really don’t have this sort of thing in our DNA, better leave to people who DO understand this space, and give them what they need to be successful.”
I think it is next to impossible for EMC to position themselves in the SMB market given that the company was built on a model of selling to large corporations. With a separate business which will have its own management, organization & business model, they can now be a formidable force to reckon with in the consumer/SMB market segment.
Needless to say, we are quite positive about the general growth in the market for online backup services and our ability to do well (in a niche of our own, at the very least) by building a great online backup platform with StoreGrid. Our recent Amazon Cloud support reaffirms our commitment to keeping you at the cutting edge of technology.
Not that we are not worried about EMC….I’d rather say that it helps to have a ‘target Goliath’ – to stay focused and put up a good fight!
