EMC Drives Multi-Vendor Storage Management Standards

Business Wire, April 3, 2002

Business/Technology Editors

PALM DESERT, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 3, 2002

EMC Joins With Major Vendors to Advance the "CIM" Common

Information Model Standard; Announces Intent to Incorporate CIM into

EMC WideSky Middleware

EMC today reaffirmed its full support of cooperative industry activities to develop robust standards for open storage management. In doing so, EMC joined a number of storage-focused vendors, the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) and the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF) in promoting the Common Information Model (CIM) and Web-Based Enterprise Management (WBEM) technologies designed to create a standard interface for the management of multi-vendor storage networks.

Speaking at the Storage Networking World (SNW) Spring 2002 Conference in Palm Desert, Chuck Hollis, EMC Vice President of Markets and Products, said, "CIM presents a great opportunity for our customers and the industry. By reducing the effort associated with achieving full management interoperability, everyone wins - software vendors, storage vendors, and most importantly, the customers who rely on us. Every customer should be demanding that their vendors actively support all relevant standards -- whether industry-driven or vendor-specific. The payoff is too great to delay."

While a wide variety of interfaces currently exist for gathering information about heterogeneous storage resources, CIM will define a standard set of parameters to access information about managing them. EMC believes CIM offers a promising model around which the storage industry will collaborate on open storage management. For this reason, EMC is actively involved in CIM development and co-chairs the SNIA working group responsible for actively developing storage-based components of CIM.

EMC is also participating with several other vendors in a demonstration of CIM-based storage management functionality at the SNW Spring 2002 Conference. Using CIM/WBEM Client technology, EMC management software will be able to discover, manage, monitor, and report on multi-vendor storage elements included in a single interoperable management environment. Additionally, through EMC's CIM Provider technology, EMC storage systems can be monitored by other vendors' CIM Clients in the same environment.

In addition to driving the development and future adoption of the CIM standard, EMC intends to extend the value of CIM by integrating the finalized CIM standard into the recently announced EMC WideSky middleware, enabling customers to take advantage of both API and standards-based interfaces for managing heterogeneous storage environments. WideSky is the industry's first storage management middleware technology that addresses the complex issues of managing a multivendor storage infrastructure. WideSky incorporates a number of industry-based interfaces (e.g. CIM, SNMP, MIBs) and vendor-based interfaces (e.g. APIs and CLIs) to provide independent software vendors a common access mechanism to incorporate a wide range of storage management capabilities into their products.

An important part of EMC's AutoIS strategy to make storage management simple, automated and open, WideSky masks the underlying complexity of multiple vendors' products, including storage systems, network devices and host storage resources.

Hollis added, "Today, WideSky plays an essential role in driving the acceptance of CIM by building a bridge between past investments and future implementations. By using WideSky as their open storage middleware today, customers can incorporate CIM-compatible technologies when they become available, while continuing to leverage WideSky's unique integration functionality."

About EMC

EMC Corporation is the world leader in information storage systems, software, networks and services, providing the information infrastructure for a connected world. More information on today's announcements is available on www.EMC.com.

EMC is a registered trademark and AutoIS and WideSky are trademarks of EMC Corporation. Other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

This release contains "forward-looking statements" as defined under the Federal Securities Laws. Actual results could differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements as a result of certain risk factors, including but not limited to: (i) adverse changes in economic conditions in various geographic markets and fluctuating currency exchange rates; (ii) an unexpected decline in the revenue growth rate without a corresponding decline in costs; (iii) competitive factors, including but not limited to pricing pressures, in the computer storage and server markets; (iv) component quality and availability; (v) rapid technological and market change and the transition to new products; (vi) the relative and varying rates of product price and component cost declines; (vii) the ability to attract and retain highly qualified employees; (viii) the uneven pattern of quarterly sales; (ix) risks associated with strategic investments and acquisitions; (x) the Company's ability to execute on its plans; and (xi) other one-time events and other important factors disclosed previously and from time to time in EMC's filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.