A focus on the worldwide economy is spotlighting EMC's capabilities.

Economic stimulus efforts around the world are setting the stage for a new dialogue with customers—conversations in which employees describe how EMC's products and services can support stimulus programs tied to creating and preserving jobs in transportation, education, healthcare, carbon-emission reduction, and more.

Stimulus packages are driving what Peter Berkel, EMC public sector director, calls "an ah-ha phenomenon" with customers. "I think we can create a greater appreciation for EMC's capabilities," he says. "I've met with customers who have told me, 'I thought you were just storage guys. I didn't know EMC could even offer what you're describing to me.'"

Right now, teams all over the U.S. are talking to state officials about how EMC information infrastructure supports education, criminal justice, or transportation initiatives. In China, EMC has forged a relationship with the Ministry of Railways that may result in providing storage and backup to 15,000 railroad stations.

Government stimulus funding represents investments totaling $2 trillion worldwide, notes Mark Greenlaw, senior director, EMC Global Stimulus Programs. EMC is interested in supporting IT functions that will be part of those packages. As Greenlaw emphasizes, EMC's primary intent is to help stimulus-funded efforts succeed: These programs have an incredible potential to improve conditions in our world now and long into the future.

"As a company, we're in the business of making enterprises more efficient and lowering their costs," Greenlaw says. "If we help a hospital network improve its IT infrastructure via a stimulus project, we will, by extension, be helping that hospital network to serve more patients with better care."

Sizing up potential

In December 2008, EMC began prepping the field and customers for what was coming. The $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) was enacted the following February.

By June, Greenlaw had been appointed to oversee the EMC Global Stimulus Programs group. He works with a virtual team of product, sales, and partner organizations, developing strategies "to put EMC's best foot forward" in a competitive stimulus climate.

EMC is most focused on ARRA, Greenlaw says, because its priorities best align with the full breadth of EMC's technologies. China's stimulus plan, in contrast, funds mostly brick-and-mortar projects (see sidebar), but Greenlaw is working with EMC China employees to dig deeply to identify potential projects. In Europe, meanwhile, stimulus plans vary by country.

EMC sees three key opportunities in the United States. With the first-short-term projects to be funded in the next six to 18 months—EMC is striving to help governments achieve their goals with current EMC technology. These efforts don't require EMC to make product or go-to-market changes. Examples include improving energy conservation, IT for government agencies, education technology, and physical security.

A second, longer-term opportunity involves an aspect of ARRA's multi-billion-dollar healthcare spending allocation: the creation of an electronic healthcare record system. EMC's experience in healthcare information technology positions it to play a major role here. EMC is integrating its solutions and combining them with partners' applications to meet the initiative's very specific requirements.

The third area offering long-term promise is the U.S. Department of Energy's Smart Grid initiative. ARRA allocates $4.5 billion toward efforts that include computerizing the nation's electricity grid in the coming years. EMC has information management, information security, physical site monitoring, systems resource management, and performance monitoring technologies and services to contribute significantly.

Traditionally, according to Greenlaw, too many government agencies "viewed us as a synonym for 'storage boxes.' This is our opportunity to re-introduce ourselves as the premier provider of security, information management, and systems management."

Preparing the field

Many of the ARRA projects most suited to EMC won't hit full speed until 2010. Right now, EMC is preparing sales teams to uncover opportunities.

Peter says, "We're offering training; we're writing playbooks; we're continually engaging the field. Our teams must build rapport and help customers with their funding applications right now. Otherwise, we miss the boat."

Jennifer Axt, EMC VP for State and Local Government, became interested in ARRA early and built a small virtual team that created collateral and drove the training. Under leadership from Axt, her team began early by matching EMC's solutions to the transportation, public safety, and education areas targeted to receive federal stimulus funds. That exercise showed EMC's solutions for IT efficiency, data protection, content management, and physical security could apply to many state and local stimulus priorities.

Under usual circumstances, public-sector customers don't have spare funds to pursue IT improvements whenever they wish. Only when they receive funds can they issue an RFP.

Because ARRA has increased certain public-sector budgets, the field can now engage these agencies more proactively and help them prepare stimulus grant applications requesting IT improvement funds. The U.S. government is distributing a lot of stimulus money through pre-existing grant programs—programs that EMC monitors but which lacked funding in the past.

EMC's public-sector specialists have spent months briefing salespeople on (1) starting stimulus-related conversations, (2) using the playbooks that describe how specific EMC technologies can help state and local government agencies, and (3) determining which grants might apply.

For example, one sales team helped a large metropolitan agency win a multi-million-dollar grant from which EMC earned a deal worth nearly $7 million.

The team had worked for months crafting a proposal to consolidate this agency's IT operations, virtualize its Exchange environment, upgrade its applications, and improve disaster recovery.

When EMC's proposal was rejected due to a lack of funds, the team helped the agency apply for a small portion of the $4 billion in stimulus money that was earmarked nationally for U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development projects. That federal grant came through. EMC's gear was onsite within a week.

New ways to create jobs

EMC's technology portfolio gives it an edge in supporting job-creation or job-preservation projects. Take the example of a public-documents warehouse: EMC technology could help digitize the material, automate its management, lower non-personnel administrative costs, make the data safe and secure, help people share it more effectively, eliminate duplication, and even reduce fraud.

EMC sales teams are using the company's collective experience in public agency support to illustrate what EMC can do globally today. Two years ago for the state of Kansas, an EMC team created an RSA-based security system to support an 8,000-person law-enforcement organization. That effort now helps other sales teams discuss similar solutions with law enforcement agencies in cities worldwide.

EMC also is more active in supporting markets not actively pursued in years past. It recently teamed with IT reseller partner CDW to make inroads in helping community health centers. Other employees are partnering with electricity meter manufacturers to help bring smart grids to life.

The whole effort is prompting EMC to examine how its technologies and services can make a positive difference in the world.

"We're looking at our capabilities in a new light," Greenlaw says. "This is a serious opportunity for us to think harder about everything we could do as a company to bolster employment, economies, societies, and our planet's health."