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Steven Murphy, President and CEO, Fujitsu Softek

Fujitsu Software Technology Corp. (Softek) President and CEO Steven Murphy believes that if history is any indication, his company is in the perfect position to rise above the hordes clamoring for a piece of the storage software market.

How so, you ask? After all, storage giants EMC Corp. (NYSE: EMC), Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE: HPQ), IBM Corp. (NYSE: IBM), and others have set their sights on exactly the same goal and with the lion's share of the hardware market, they have a considerable headstart. Fujitsu Softek's chance of grabbing this prize, as a small company and a relative newcomer to the industry, should be prèsque impossible.

Actually, Murphy finds all the noise coming from the hardware companies "hysterical" (we'll explain why later). But first, who is this man who dares to laugh in EMC's face? [Ed. note: Or glare, to judge by his picture at the left.]

Prior to joining Fujitsu Softek in Sunnyvale, Calif., Murphy was president of the software division at Amdahl Corp. When Fujitsu Ltd. (KLS: FUJI.KL) acquired Amdahl for $850 million in 1997 and decided to spin off the software group in March 2001, Murphy was the obvious choice to run the new entity, which remains a wholly owned subsidiary of Fujitsu Ltd.

Before Amdahl, Murphy was president and COO of Minacom Solutions, which develops management software for service providers. He also was VP and general manager at Applied Digital Access (a telecommunications service fulfillment firm that merged with Dynatech, which became Acterna); and director of marketing for Anderson Consulting (now Accenture).

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