EMC, the leading provider of enterprise storage infrastructure, security and content management solutions, recently pledged an additional investment of USD 1.5 billion in India over the next five years (2010 to 2014). That’s a three fold increase of its previous investment of USD 500 million (since 2006).

On September 9, the company also inaugurated a new 4.95 lakh square feet facility at Marathahalli Outer Ring Road, Bengaluru, which will serve as its Center of Excellence (COE) for R&D activities and global services. This state-of-the-art LEED Gold green certified facility can seat 3,500 people and is one of EMC’s largest R&D Centers outside the US.
Brian Pereira visited the new COE, toured its 25,000 square feet data Center and asked Sarv Saravanan, VP and MD, EMC India COE, about the key areas for this investment. Saravanan also updated Network Computing on EMC’s education initiatives for India.

Why is EMC giving so much importance to India now? Where does India fit in your plan to become a stronger global player?
We set up our operations here in 2003 and for the last two years the COE has been an R&D center. We started with a small team with no major agenda. By 2007 we employed 2,000 people and outsourced to the Tier-1 system integrators in India, who delivered some projects and services for us.
In 2007 we started thinking about how to become a better global company, to increase revenue prospects. We saw that India was a major hub for talent and one of the high growth markets. So we chose India as a strategic location for us to grow. China is another possible market for growth. Since then, we have been treading deeper in the areas of product competency and R&D. We are also ramping up our global services capability.

What are some of the innovations from the India COE? What’s the value proposition that you bring to the table?
One is NetWorker (a backup and recovery suite). What we did for the NetWorker product is that we made it more relevant for the low end of the market—the SMB/SME segment. It is an important segment for high growth. The RSA division has some security innovation originating from India, notably Access Manager and the Federated Identity Manager. (See box: ‘Made in India’). All this happened in the last two and a half years.
EMC has innovation around information infrastructure. We try to understand how our products come together to deliver value. Customers talk about outcomes, not about the merits of storage or the merits of security. We work with partners to create solutions. We understand the customer processes. The partners bring in the domain knowledge and they address customer problems. They have the business knowledge and the process knowledge. Some of them have strong industry solution frameworks. We bring our different products together—in the areas of storage, security, and content management, and help customers leverage on the integrated value of our technology.

Could you outline the areas for your investment in India? What’s the break-up of these investments?
We don’t really have a break-up for this but there are four areas we’d like to invest in. Looking ahead, the focus will continue to be R&D going deep in certain domains and driving innovation around it.
Secondly, our services business will grow commensurate with our product business growth. Services is a key focus area for us. We will scale up our global services presence in consulting operations, product support operations, technology implementation services, remote deployment and management services.
The third area is KPO (Knowledge Process Outsourcing). We are a USD 15 billion business and we need to leverage the back office functions in the KPO. We need to support our G&A (General and Administrative) functions to support our sales and marketing worldwide.
Fourthly, we will continue to invest in the market. India is a high growth market. We want to use our investment to grow our business in India and to deepen our relationship with the global partners from India.

Studies show that just 25 percent of graduates are employable because university curriculum is not aligned with industry requirements. What is EMC doing to close the demand-supply gap for skilled professionals in the industry?
At a global level we have the EMC University. In India our education initiative is called EMC Academic Alliance program (EAA). It was launched in July 2006. EMC has forged alliances with over 150 engineering colleges and it offers generic storage curriculum, though not on EMC-specific technology. This includes faculty training and program support.
Secondly, on September 8, we announced a research partnership with IIIT-Bangalore to undertake joint advanced studies and research activities in the field of information infrastructure. We also fund some scholarships here under the EMC India Research Scholar Program.
Thirdly, we are trying to close the demand-supply gap through an academic outreach initiative for Tier-3 engineering colleges. The Nasscom-McKinsey research report indicates that only 25 percent graduates are ready for the industry. In these engineering colleges there is a lack of understanding about the streams of opportunities in the industry and about industry developments. We are from the IT industry and our own employees went through the process of orienting themselves to be successful in our organization. So we thought about harnessing all this to help colleges prepare their students for the industry.
We joined a non-profit US organization called Junior Achievement World Wide (JA) for the BridgeIT India Program. JA World Wide is the world’s largest organization dedicated to inspiring and preparing young people to succeed in a global economy. Through a dedicated volunteer network, JA World Wide provides in-school after-school programs for students that focus on three content key areas: entrepreneurship, work readiness, and financial literacy.
We bring in the industry perspective and they bring in the process and program management competencies. We have 12-hour modules to train students about the opportunities available in the industry and how to prepare themselves to pursue those opportunities. So far we have delivered training to 300-350 students.