Storage giant EMC creates "rich media" division
The company spawns a new division dedicated to delivering video, photos and audio over the Internet, a move that follows some of its closest competitors.
The Hopkinton, Mass.-based company hired Bill Nelson, formerly president of Lucent Technologies' North American operations, to lead the new division, the company said Monday.
The new division consolidates several smaller divisions and increases EMC's attention to the demands of sending information other than text across the Internet.
While EMC's focus has been on large-scale, centralized data storage devices that compete with IBM and Hewlett-Packard products, smaller competitors such as Network Appliance and Sun Microsystems have been selling products that compete in a different part of the storage realm.
Sun and Network Appliance have focused on sending streams of "rich media," such as video and audio, across the Internet, a job that requires different expertise than EMC's. Such services typically require numerous smaller devices as well as single centralized systems. In December, EMC introduced Chameleon, a less expensive storage server more suited to the task.
The new EMC division will incorporate the operations of EMC's media solutions business, which concentrated on rich media needs at broadcasting, telecommunications and cable TV companies, the company said.