EMC denies rumours of discontent over SAMS

By Rodney Appleyard

Aug 12, 2005: EMC has rubbished claims sent in an email to journalists around the world by an anonymous source who claims to be an EMC insider that there is discontent within the ranks at EMC over the release of the company's new surveillance data management product.

The email claims that EMC's new SAMS (Surveillance Analysis and Management Solution) product is not capable of fulfilling the tasks that EMC reported in its release this week. Rather, the self-proclaimed whistleblower says that EMC has made an agreement to sell a product from a company called VideoNext in Vienna.

It goes on to claim that VideoNext does not do what EMC is claiming it does and EMC execs know this.

"EMC and its partners are making proposals to government agencies for security and surveillance systems that do not work as claimed. Many people inside EMC know this, and yet were overruled when the decision was made to send out this press release."

The sender also says that there is much disagreement and discord within EMC over this and some people could lose their jobs because of it.

"VideoNext employees have been threatened with their jobs if they disclose their deal with EMC. A lack of security functionality has been a major omission for EMC, and so they are now making stuff up. EMC has no credibility in the security market whatsoever. Even internal EMC Execs don't really believe they will succeed in security and were not willing to make the investment to make SAMS a real product.

"The product SAMS that was announced costs 4x more than any other vendor providing storage for surveillance. EMC knows that this product will fail."

Clive Gold, the national product manager for EMC, strongly denies these rumours and believes that it is probably an attack made by its competitors in an attempt to discredit the company.

"SAMS is the final result of hard work with a number of partners. We are all united at EMC over this exciting new product and what it will be able to achieve for customers. It should provide a very large opportunity to help organisations deal with security more easily, which is essential following recent events.

"We are looking forward to using this product to help customers better manage video information. We are all on the same page and are firing on all cylinders. I think the problem is that we are such a big company now, that other people want to discredit us and come up with these dirty tricks to try to bring us down. We are not interested in these kind of negative rumours."

IDM contacted Austrian-based VideoNext, but are still awaiting a detailed response to the allegations.

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