EMC to educate key opinion leaders in ILM and storage innovation at GITEX 2005

EMC will showcase the major software gains it has made over the past twelve months, while educating attendees from the local and regional media on the benefits of the concepts and technologies around which it has built an industry-leading reputation.

Having played a pivotal role in Storage World 2005, the past year has witnessed phenomenal growth and innovation at EMC. Having become a pillar of the Middle East storage market thanks to an expert Middle East division led by Mohammed Amin, regional manager for EMC Middle East, who will be present at GITEX, EMC has secured a number of influential new customers.

These include OmanTel, the leading telecommunications company, which has successfully deployed one of the Middle East region's most advanced disaster recovery and business continuity strategies based on systems acquired from EMC; and Roshan, Afghanistan's leading GSM wireless services provider, which has used an EMC Symmetrix DMX1000 network storage system to rebuild the country's telecommunications set-up on a revolutionary new footing.

EMC's presentation at GITEX 2005 will share the key factors of these successes, while showing the benefits of a range of storage innovations, such as virtualization, archiving and document management, concepts which allow efficient storage of critical and voluminous information, and enable firms to structure their storage systems according to individual needs and circumstances.

Furthermore, EMC hopes, through GITEX, to educate regional decision-makers on the concept of information lifecycle management (ILM). ILM ensures a business' constantly growing wealth of information is maximized throughout its life, from creation and use to lifecycle and disposal, and enables customers to align their IT infrastructures with the changing value of their information over time.

With the volume of data stored across the Middle East growing in double-digit figures every year, ILM is now a vital necessity across the GCC.

Having pioneered its 'Making Storage Simple' initiative earlier this year, EMC aims to alleviate the complexity of data storage for firms across the Middle East, particularly small and medium-sized firms which lack a large IT department. GITEX will be crucial in this process.

"In today's business climate, information is everything, and the loss of data, and the time it takes to retrieve that data, can cost billions of dirhams to the company concerned. We hope to educate GITEX attendees on the need, and the means, to secure their data with the most watertight technology, and maximize that data with intelligent archiving solutions," said Amin.

While offering delegates the benefit of its industry-leading expertise, EMC will, through GITEX, build awareness of a range of new products, such as EMC Documentum Content Storage Services, the world's first storage-aware content management platform, which has recently been introduced to the Middle East, and Symmetrix DMX, a tiered storage infrastructure solution set to improve storage efficiency across the GCC.

EMC executives will also reveal major improvements to its award-winning EMC CLARiiON® family of networked storage systems and software, including new UltraPoint Technology that provides customers with greater availability and reliability as their environments scale and become more sophisticated. EMC has also expanded the functionality of its CLARiiON software to help customers more effectively manage and protect their information throughout its lifecycle. These improvements build upon CLARiiON's already unmatched levels of availability, reliability and data integrity.

Having established a burgeoning channel network across the GCC through agreements with expert distributors such as Ebttikar, EMC is set to further enhance its profile as a proactive leader in storage solutions across the Middle East.

"EMC intends to expand our network of excellent channel distributors for both the enterprise and small- to medium-sized business markets across the Middle East. Our exposure at GITEX will enable us to achieve this aim, while showcasing EMC's information lifecycle management strategy to reduce costs and improve access to key information for top decision-makers across the GCC," Mr. Amin continued.