Flash boom drives EMC sales boost
XtremIO sales rocket 300 per cent
Rocketing sales of flash technology have helped EMC's sales creep up in Q2, with the firm's boss boasting "significantly faster growth" than its rivals in the space.
Overall at EMC, for the three months to 30 June, net profit took a 17 per cent nosedive annually to $519m (£333m) on sales which climbed two per cent over the same period to $6bn.
Within the EMC Information Infrastructure business – one strand of the EMC Federation – emerging storage was a star performer after sales jumped 49 per cent annually. EMC said its Isilon and software-defined storage kit fuelled the growth, along with its all-flash offering XtremIO, whose sales rocketed a whopping 300 per cent annually in the quarter.
In converged infrastructure, Vblock-related revenue jumped 30 per cent annually.
EMC's chief executive Joe Tucci was bullish about EMC's position in flash.
"If you look at XtremIO versus all the other flash players, [we are] significantly bigger [and have] significantly faster growth," he said.
Tucci faced questioning from analysts on the earnings call about the future of RSA. One said the security arm accounted for only four per cent of EMC revenue and pointed to its declining revenue in an otherwise buoyant security market.
In a statement, Tucci said he is pleased with the company's progress against a difficult industry backdrop.
"While pleased with many aspects of the second quarter, especially with the market acceptance and rapid growth of our newer products, we also saw customers become more conservative around refreshing their traditional infrastructures as they plan their IT transformations," he said. "We also saw ongoing geopolitical factors in China and Russia.
"To capture more opportunity we have honed our growth strategy around four pillars: best-in-class products and solutions that are, or will be, offered as a service; an expanded focus on cloud services; tighter co-ordination of our federated go-to-market approach; and a leadership team that is second to none."