Innovation Network

At EMC, innovation is at the core of everything we do – from how we run our operations to how we develop and deliver new products and services. We rely on innovation to survive and thrive, and believe the intersection of innovation and sustainability is where we can uncover solutions to our greatest business, social and environmental challenges.

The EMC Innovation Network is our innovation engine, an internal team whose efforts aim to spark the creation and delivery of high-value ideas that accelerate innovation and drive progress. The Innovation Network runs ongoing programs and annual events that help expand our knowledge of the issues and challenges facing our company, customers, and industry, as well as the world around us. With this knowledge, we identify innovative opportunities to create the future of our company and shape the world we live in.

Innovation Showcase

Our Innovation Showcase is a competition that invites EMC teams or individual employees to submit ideas for solutions to company or customer challenges. The Showcase generates breakthrough ideas for technical innovations and business process improvements that will help EMC, our customers and the Information Technology industry continue to thrive over the long term.

Employees use EMC|ONE, our internal social media site, to collaborate and develop ideas. Submissions are evaluated and voted on by the EMC community and expert judges select ideas to be incubated for development. Winning ideas are announced at the annual Innovation Conference.

In addition to overall “best-in-show” winners, ideas are selected for awards from specific organizations and functions including each of our Center of Excellence, CTO office, Symmetrix and Virtualization Products Group (SVPG), Information Intelligence Group (IIG), Data Computing Products Division (DCPD), Backup Recovery Systems (BRS), and RSA. Special award categories also included Environmental Stewardship, Sales Innovation, Social Innovation, Information Technology (IT), Total Customer Experience, and Diversity and Inclusion.

Innovation Conference

The Innovation Conference is our annual celebration of innovation and innovators. Through the conference, we unite employees globally, provide a forum for knowledge sharing, and recognize and reward employees for innovation leadership.

2011 marked the fifth year of the Innovation Conference. A record 1,590 proposals in the Innovation Showcase were submitted by 1,214 employees representing 25 countries. 28 entries were selected as “winners” for each of the Sponsored awards, and recognized at the Conference hosted in Santa Clara, California. More than a dozen EMC locations around the world simultaneously hosted regional conferences, connecting to the event via live webcast.

EMC Fellow & Distinguished Engineer Program

Our Corporate EMC Fellow & Distinguished Engineer (FDE) Program honors those individual contributors who have demonstrated outstanding achievement and a broad range of technical leadership across the company. After the Innovation Showcase and Conference, FDEs provide support as teams and individuals to incubate and advance winning ideas across EMC and our subsidiaries. FDEs also serve as mentors for our employees and contribute to the company’s overall strategy development.

The following individuals were honored at an Induction gala and welcomed into the 2011 class of EMC Fellows and Distinguished Engineers:

EMC Fellows:

Percy Tzelnic, Sr. VP, Office of the CTO, Hopkinton, MA

EMC Distinguished Engineers:

• Paul Austin, Global Presales Lead, Flash Business Unit, McLean, VA
• John Cardente, Distinguished Engineer, Unified Storage Division, Hopkinton, MA
• Arieh Don, Sr. Consulting Engineer, Symmetrix and Virtualization Products Division, Hopkinton, MA
• Mike Evans, Sr. Consulting Engineer, Unified Storage Division, Hopkinton, MA
• Christopher Gaudlip, CTO, Managed Services Division, Dallas, TX
• John Hayden, VP, CTO, Unified Storage and Isilon Storage Divisions, Hopkinton, MA
• Windsor Hsu, CTO, Data Domain/Backup Recovery Systems Division, Santa Clara, CA
• Paul Linstead, Sr. Consultant Engineer, Symmetrix Software Engineering, Hopkinton, MA
• Zachary Loafman, Distinguished Engineer, Isilon Storage Division, Seattle, WA
• Charles McDevitt, Chief Architect, Data Computing Division/Greenplum R&D, San Mateo, CA
• Mark Parenti, Chief Architect, Unified Storage Division, Nashua, NH
• Sazzala Reddy, CTO, Emerging Technologies/Data Domain, Santa Clara, CA—no longer at EMC
• Jeroen vanRotterdam, CTO, Information Intelligence Group, Pleasanton,CA
• Yael Villa, CTO, Identity Protection and Verification Group/RSA, Herzliya Israel
• Jonathon Walton, Distinguished Engineer, Isilon Storage Division, Seattle, WA
• Riaz Zolfonoon, Architect/Technologist, Identity and Data Protection, RSA, Bedford, MA

Global Innovation Network Analytics

The Global Innovation Network Analytics (GINA) initiative was created, designed and tested within EMC’s Centers of Excellence in 2011 and will be implemented company-wide in 2012. It is a powerful tool that provides the Innovation Network and EMC’s executive management with a visual representation of “knowledge transfer” across the company’s global employee base.

Leveraging a Greenplum-based repository, GINA allows employees to submit meeting agendas or minutes to a central database and then automatically maps EMC’s global activities, showing the specific lines of connection across the company through recruiting, innovation activities, research and development, publications, patents, and more. GINA allows users to learn more about specific areas, providing links to additional information about each activity.

GINA provides a single pane-of-glass view of major collaboration and knowledge transfer across the globe, enabling the Innovation Network to achieve its mission to “expand knowledge locally, transfer it globally, and leverage it strategically.”