In Search of Research

5:45 PM -- The EMC Innovation Network is... Well, it's tough to tell, really. (See EMC Enhances Network.) Here's how EMC Corp. (NYSE: EMC) describes it:

But EMC already has 5,000 employees in R&D and dedicates more than $1 billion to research every year. The company already has commitments from Carnegie Mellon, MIT, and Stanford, to name just a few. It's already working on a range of advanced technologies. What's different here?

"We are not changing the organization. We are introducing a virtual community," says Burt Kaliski, the former chief scientist from RSA who has been put in charge of the Innovation Network and reports to EMC CTO Jeff Nick.

Now, this guy's smart. In a recent interview, we knew he understood our questions. We also knew he didn't want to answer very many of them:

Supposedly, the Innovation Network will home in on issues like advanced searching or Semantic Web, information-centric security, Web 2.0 storage, and information grids. It will bring researchers EMC is already working with together with ones who haven't been networked before.But how this will happen remains a mystery. Could be a new Web portal, a few conference calls, some email. Beats me. But behind the scenes, we hear the machinery of EMC marketing whirring.

Out of politeness, I'll pretend not to notice.

Mary Jander, Site Editor, Byte and Switch