Network Computing is part of the Informa Tech Division of Informa PLC

This site is operated by a business or businesses owned by Informa PLC and all copyright resides with them. Informa PLC's registered office is 5 Howick Place, London SW1P 1WG. Registered in England and Wales. Number 8860726.

James B. Rothnie, CTO, EMC Corp.

As senior vice president and chief technology officer at EMC
Corp.
(NYSE: EMC), James B. Rothnie arguably holds the future of the
company in his hands. He is, after all, responsible for EMCs entire product
strategy – at a crucial juncture in the company’s history.

Analysts have said that the storage behemoth must reinvent itself to
focus on selling highly profitable software and services in order to avoid
the perils of a commoditized storage hardware market. Rothnie says networked
storage will form a major part of this repositioning.

And he’s not sitting on his hands. For the six months ending in June, EMC’s revenues rose 10 percent to $4.37 billion. (Nice one, Jim!) The increase came courtesy of higher revenue from software and network-attached storage products.

Of course, EMC’s net income fell 33 percent during the same period to $507.7 million. (Oops!) However, a lot of that was down to James spending a ton o’

money on the R&D necessary to develop EMC’s new product lines – so no harm, no
foul, we say.

Yes, there’s no doubt about it: James is a Grand Fromage in the storage
world. A Gouda, if you will. Or maybe a big old Gorgonzola; you know, the ones that come in the humongous wheels – [ed. note: Get on with it!]

  • 1