EMC Builds a Fortress and Streamlines Paper Processing

EMC Corp. unveiled its plans to move into the Software as a Service (SaaS) and Platform as a service (PaaS) arenas with its new MozyEnterprise service and EMC Fortress platform. In other company news, EMC announced a Web-based document capture product that streamlines paper-based transactional processing.

Focal Points:

• EMC is joining the set of PaaS players with its announcement of EMC Fortress, which is its new model for delivering software and storage services. The platform will be the underlying infrastructure behind EMC SaaS applications. EMC Fortress is a secure, multi-tenant, scalable SaaS delivery platform providing customers with centralized billing, management and metering, according to company officials. The company also states the platform is optimized for scale and delivery.
• EMC unveiled its SaaS strategy with the release of MozyEnterprise for online backup of desktops, laptops and remote Windows servers. The company also announced several new reseller agreements with business partners to offer MozyEnterprise online backup services to their customers. MozyEnterprise is a new offering that uses EMC Fortress and is based on the Mozy family of online backup SaaS solutions that became part of EMC with the October 2007 acquisition of Berkeley Data Systems. Authentication, authorization, and key management will come from the RSA Security Division. The company offers 24x7x365 support and guaranteed response times. Pricing is subscription based with a minimum monthly commitment. Desktop/laptop fees are $5.25/mo. per desktop/laptop plus $0.70/mo. per gigabyte protected while Microsoft Corp. Windows Server costs $9.25/mo. per supported Windows server plus $2.35/mo. per gigabyte protected.
• EMC announced a new Web-based distributed document capture solution, Captiva eInput 2.0, which is an extension to the Captiva InputAccel platform. Captiva eInput integrates with a wide array of back-end systems, including enterprise content management (ECM), business process management (BPM), and other enterprise applications. The key new features are its automated document sorting, intuitive thin client interface, field level point and click capabilities, integration with Captiva InputAccel and Dispatcher, offline and remote scan and indexing, support of bar code and other indexing technologies. 

Experton Group believes EMC will be using its new SaaS and PaaS strategies to move aggressively into the consumer and SMB markets, areas where EMC has little penetration. By leveraging its Mozy products and business partners, EMC should be able to quickly capture customers and become a major player in the SaaS backup market. IT executives interested in this type of service should do a detailed comparison of the EMC offering with other players such as Amazon.com Inc.'s Simple Storage Service (S3) and Symantec Corp.'s Protection Network as well as against in-house backup. Once a decision is made, policy and procedures should be established to ensure enterprise-wide consistency and cost containment. IT executives should also analyze the cost/benefits and implement a solution like EMC's eInput where it reduces the cost of paper transactions and improves the record e-discovery process.