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 In the hot seat
By Dhaval Valia
The One EMC transformation is the most daunting assignment Manoj Chugh has undertaken in his illustrious career of 28 years. Another way to look at it could be that Chugh is perhaps the most suited to execute the One EMC strategy.
Of the 10 years EMC has been present in India, seven have been under Chugh. During his tenure, EMC has grown five times compared to the network storage market that grew three times.
But even for a man of Chugh’s experience and stature it’s not going be easy. While the concept of One EMC and a unified go-to-market strategy sounds good on paper, executing it on the ground will be difficult.
So far Chugh has made changes which were internal and relatively easy to make. While there is no doubt that he has done a good job of reorganizing the various business portfolios and hiring some of the best professionals in the industry to head them, getting the entire organization to speak the language of One EMC is critical.
Even more critical is getting its partner ecosystem to speak the same lingo. Since EMC is a channel-centric company, its partners are the most decisive element for delivering on the One EMC vision.
What makes Chugh’s job even tougher is that EMC has a lot riding on India. It views the country as a strategic geography not only in terms of market potential, but also in terms of an R&D base that will play a vital role in developing the technologies of the future.
That’s evident from the investment EMC has earmarked for the country over the next five years—$1.5 billion—which is five times more than what it has invested in the last 10 years.
EMC will expect India to deliver on its promised potential, which means that the Indian team will have to deliver high performance in the coming years.
What may inspire confidence in Chugh and his team is that the One EMC approach is beginning to show results. EMC says that many of the storage infrastructure projects it won in the past three quarters have been primarily due to the company’s unified approach to information storage and management.
Nevertheless, Chugh is not getting swayed by the initial success and he knows very well that the execution of One EMC cannot be judged in a short period as there is still a long way to go.
In all frankness he told me that the company’s performance of the past few months was partly because EMC did some things right, and partly because the competition didn’t do some things right.
I won’t be surprised if at the end of his long and illustrious career Chugh may very well be judged by how well he executes One EMC. |