EMC bolsters software push

EMC has signalled its intention to make software a greater focus by spinning off a storage management division into a separate company, as well as making several appointments to its management team.

Diligent Technologies is the name of the new company, to be headed by former EMC executive Doron Kempel. The company is based around a research facility in the Israeli city of Tel Aviv, boasting a 65-strong team of storage software developers. The company will also inherit around 20 US-based employees.

The company's first product, based on existing EMC technology which it has now acquired, is an application called Tape Virtualization - Mainframe Systems. The application operates in MVS (Multiple Virtual Storage) environments, writing sequential data to tape and allowing tape-based data to be treated as if it were on disk. The product was previously sold by EMC as CopyCross. EMC said it would continue to sell the products it offloaded to Diligent, and would also resell new applications developed by the start-up.

EMC has contributed the Israeli facility, worth US$4.6 million, and tipped in another $5 million in cash for the new company. EMC's ownership of Diligent shares was reported to be pegged at 24 per cent.

Meanwhile on the executive side, EMC's most notable appointment this week was Tony Marzulli, who the company said would head up marketing for its recently created Open Software division. Mr Marzulli was headhunted from Lawson Software, and had previously had experience at Hewlett-Packard.

The Open Software initiative is intended to underpin EMC's AutoIS suite of software, including the ControlCenter family and PowerPath software.

The company also shifted Chuck Hollis to work in a similar marketing role in the Storage Platforms division. Mr Hollis is an eight-year veteran of EMC.

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