More than 300 analysts and members of the press gathered in New York last week at EMC's annual financial analyst meeting. Joe Tucci, EMC president and CEO, and EMC's management team outlined the company's strategy to enter new markets, lower its prices, and continue storage software interoperability initiatives. The storage giant announced expected revenue growth in the midteens for the second half of 2003 and for 2004. The company expects its gross margins to continue to improve to 48 percent or greater by fourth quarter 2004. EMC reaffirmed that it will be profitable for the rest of the year and expects to meet its previously stated revenue expectations for third quarter 2003.
The company has improved its manufacturing and testing enough that it plans to release lower-cost products on a more regular basis. Future products will cost less when released than the products they replace. EMC is currently investigating entering the tape market, but the company hasn't decided on a strategy for doing so. On the software front, the company's CLARiiON and Symmetrix lines will be fully compliant with the Storage Networking Industry Association's (SNIA's) Storage Management Initiative (SMI) by the end of 2003.
