EMC acquisition to boost services skills

Internosis will form the basis of EMC's new Microsoft services arm

Storage giant EMC has continued its recent spending spree, announcing two new acquisitions in the last fortnight while also confirming it is to cut 1,000 jobs under plans to streamline its management.

In a move signalling the vendor's desire to bolster its consultancy capabilities, EMC this week acquired US-based IT services firm Internosis. It will integrate the 300-person company with its own professional services division as the EMC Microsoft Practice.

An EMC spokesman said privately held Internosis, which specialises in Microsoft application infrastructure and development, will help accelerate customer adoption of EMC's information lifecycle management (ILM) offerings.

Simon Robinson of analyst firm The 451 Group said the purchase reflects the need for services input when organisations undertake ILM deployments. "ILM is about moving data across storage tiers as it changes value, but to do that you have to assign value and policies to data and that usually requires services capabilities," he said. "We'll see more acquisitions on the services front from EMC."

The deal came just days after the EMC spent $30m to acquire new grid middleware technology from hosted grid specialist Acxiom. Under the terms of the deal, the two vendors will also partner to develop a proprietary version of Acxiom's hosted grid offering that enterprises could use for computationally intensive application tasks such as business analytics.

Robinson said the acquisition represented a "toe in the water" move for EMC as it attempts to move from its storage roots towards becoming a broader infrastructure vendor. "Grid technology is making the transition from scientific communities to the enterprise and there is a role for storage to play in these deployments," he explained.

EMC's acquisitions coincide with its announcement earlier this month of 1,000 job cuts which a company spokesman said would strip out "pockets of bureaucracy" built up during the vendor's recent acquisition spree. However, he added that the vendor would still increase overall headcount during 2006 by recruiting staff to its sales and development teams.