The History and Legacy of EMC World

Technology trade shows have a deep and rich history in the IT industry. Companies and IT workers arrive at these conventions to learn, network, collaborate and take stock of the industry as a whole.

EMC, a leading data and information management technology company, has played host to its own trade show for the past 11 years. This year’s show in Las Vegas is poised to be another impressive gathering of top-tier IT minds and talents.

EMC World, which was once known as the EMC Enterprise Wizards Conference, has rotated between the cities of Boston, Las Vegas, New Orleans and Orlando, Fla. Each year, the company’s customer and partner conference has seen steady growth.

In 2007, Whitney Tidmarsh, who was vice president of marketing for the EMC Content Management and Archiving business unit at the time, remarked that at 7,000 attendees, the conference had quadrupled in size from what it was in 2004. In 2008, Joe Tucci, EMC’s chief executive officer, noted that the conference had succeeded in drawing over 9,000 attendees. Last year’s show brought in over 10,000 attendees, which the company announced was the largest attendance in the conference’s history.

Before we gear up for this year’s show, let’s review some of the highlights from Tucci’s past EMC World keynote speeches.

In Joe Tucci’s Words

“If you think about it, one of the most untapped management needs in any organization is all these thousands and thousands and thousands of file systems they have sitting across the whole organization. So with file virtualization technology … they'll be able to centrally manage that, share it and really help control the costs and the growth of those file systems.” — 2007 EMC World Keynote

“We're gonna have to deal with this proliferation of information so that we make sure it doesn't overwhelm us, that we fall victim to it, but we take that information and use it to get us benefit and value for ourselves and for our companies.” — 2008 EMC World Keynote

“Whether you operate on your internal cloud or operate on a partner service provider cloud, you'd have the same level of trust, the same level of dynamic [computing], the same level of efficiency. You'd be just as secure, just as reliable, and you can still sleep at night and costs will go down. That's the vision that we have and that's how we're defining cloud computing.” — 2009 EMC World Keynote

“IT infrastructures have gotten too complex, too inefficient, too inflexible and too costly to take us to where we need to be. 72 percent of IT investment is to maintain existing applications, existing infrastructure. Only 28 percent is spent on real new innovation and new technologies, that can help a company power its revenue.” — 2010 EMC World Keynote

“We are coming from a PC-only world, to a world where you have iPads, smartphones and a tremendous amount of choice. Companies are now looking to provision these in a singular way, and how they are being managed is going through a significant change.” — 2011 EMC World Keynote

Stay tuned to biztechmagazine.com for more EMC World coverage in the coming week.