Originating Author: Fred Moore
EMC World started as a birds of a feather storage conference for technical experts. With over 9,000 attendees and nearly 580 sessions at EMC World in Las Vegas last week, it is evolving into a hybrid storage event combining a growing and diverse user community with education, partnering exposure, and numerous best practices themes, while building tremendous awareness, loyalty, and credibility for EMC's strategic directions. Many EMC executives were accessible, adding credibility to their customer commitment. NetApp has stated it will launch a major user conference next February in San Francisco to build similar values. These two companies are clearly growing considerably faster than storage industry revenues and gaining both market and mind share. The storage industry is now at a point in time where the best product doesn't necessarily win the deal. The companies with the best mind share, market awareness and services often win, even when they may not have the best product.
Action Item: Virtually any established storage company should consider how the EMC model has evolved and the value it has created; then initiate some type of user and partner-based conference…even if at the grass roots level, with the intent of cementing mindshare and building longer-term credibility. It’s a great bang for the marketing buck!
Footnotes: Yes, Fred, as an EMC insider, you're right -- the synergy created by EMC World is humbling to behold. At a high level, it works for customers, partners, and -- of course -- EMC. I have to give kudos for the team for creating what's probably the de-facto event in our industry. Unfortunately, I think the prospects for others creating similar events will be challenging.