EMC girds for grid computing

Quietly, EMC has been integrating grid into its technology strategy and product portfolio for months, but the company started to make some noise about it earlier this month with a $30 million buyout of middleware technology from Acxiom.

Acxiom will continue to use the technology to power its managed-information service, which it will develop further and market with EMC. But Acxiom, which has been around since 1969, known by other names, also will work with EMC to piece together a hardware and software bundle that customers can use to better manage their data by tapping the power of computer grids.

The buyout of Acxiom technology is not EMC's first effort to bolster its grid expertise. It has gathered expertise in grids with the year-ago hiring of Ian Baird, CTO for Grid and Utility Computing Solutions (he had been with Platform Computing) and the hiring in 2004 of CTO Jeff Nick, who worked on IBM's On-Demand Initiative.

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Quietly, EMC has been integrating grid into its technology strategy and product portfolio for months, but the company started to make some noise about it earlier this month with a $30 million buyout of middleware technology from Acxiom.

Acxiom will continue to use the technology to power its managed-information service, which it will develop further and market with EMC. But Acxiom, which has been around since 1969, known by other names, also will work with EMC to piece together a hardware and software bundle that customers can use to better manage their data by tapping the power of computer grids.

The buyout of Acxiom technology is not EMC's first effort to bolster its grid expertise. It has gathered expertise in grids with the year-ago hiring of Ian Baird, CTO for Grid and Utility Computing Solutions (he had been with Platform Computing) and the hiring in 2004 of CTO Jeff Nick, who worked on IBM's On-Demand Initiative.

"The competitive big guys, such as IBM, Sun and HP, have already made plays in this space, so EMC needed to be able to have some expertise around grid computing," says Steve Duplessie, senior analyst for Enterprise Storage Group. "With [past EMC acquisition] VMware creating virtual machines, the next step is for EMC to offer a virtual data center."

Acxiom's software goes beyond VMware's, says Brian Babineau, an analyst for Enterprise Strategy Group. "It can be used to move information around so it can be analyzed and used more efficiently."

Under their agreement, EMC and Acxiom say they will develop a non-hosted software/hardware bundle called the Business Information Grid, for managing data. The firms pledge to deliver later this year a beta-product bundle that includes Smarts workflow-automation technology, virtualization, information life-cycle management and grid-scheduling software, as well as secure access and authentication capabilities.

EMC has announced 13 technology or company acquisitions in the last 36 months. The latest was announced last week, when EMC bought Internosis, a firm that focuses on Microsoft applications.

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