Extending EMC's reach into Asia

Foreign teams expected to guide the company's future with innovations that can apply across the globe

(Wiqan Ang for The Boston Globe)

Data storage giant EMC Corp. is based in Hopkinton, but over 10 percent of the company's $13.2 billion in revenue last year came from the other side of the world. Asian demand for EMC's products is surging. Globe reporter Hiawatha Bray gets the big picture from Steve Leonard, EMC's president of Asia-Pacific operations.

You spend most of your time in Asia, right?

I live in Singapore, but travel inside Asia probably four days, five days a week. Always on the road somewhere. It's tiring, no doubt about it. Every company in the world right now is trying to figure out how to get into or to succeed more in Asia. We're going into some other markets such as Vietnam or Sri Lanka. We're expanding in places where we've been but now we have a much bigger presence, such as India or China. We've opened, for example, seven offices in China in the last year. We have more offices to be opened in China. We have made about $1.7 billion in targeted investments aimed at Asia-Pacific that we've announced in the last year and a half.

Where are these investments going?
Geographically, they're in India, which is one of our big engineering centers. They're in China, which is becoming an increasingly significant engineering center, and they're in Singapore, which is another one of our e-labs. Where most of that deployment is going is around innovation, engineering, research, and development, as part of the broader EMC world network.

How much have you invested in manufacturing in Asia?
Not this time. Our manufacturing is still in the United States and in Europe.

But many technology companies do much of their manufacturing in Asia. Why not EMC?
It goes back to some of the tax structures that are available to us. It goes back to where we have points of engineering capabilities and teams today. We wouldn't choose to dislocate current capabilities in Europe or the United States. We would want to add to those capabilities, and I for one am hoping that we'll see ourselves adding some of those capabilities in Asia in the years ahead.

Is EMC in Asia mainly to serve Asian customers, or are your Asian activities leading to better products and services worldwide?
It is helping us be more relevant to the Asian market. A proof point is our SOHO or small and medium business storage solution that was in large part developed by our software team in China. It will be relevant for the Asian markets because a lot of the engineering and development would occur in the Asian market. At the same time, the especially exciting thing for us is that some of the new technology for EMC around the world will be developed in Asia. So some of where EMC will go in the years ahead will be developed in part by our teams in Asia as a part of this global innovation network. We feel proud of that because we want to be a net exporter of intellectual capital. Historically, Asia has been an importer, taking other products and trying to tweak them and refine them. We're excited about the idea of being a net creator of intellectual capital.

In the United States, even consumers collect huge amounts of digital data these days. Is that happening in places like China?
Ironically, I would say as much, and maybe more. Although there are restrictions on what can be produced and shared because of government views, there is more energy within the younger generation in China around producing information - videos or music. There are more posts occurring at blogs, and video sites, and photo sites, and music sites as there are in most countries around the world.

Do customers in Asian markets use data differently than in the United States?
The use of information is not different. The CIOs, CEOs I meet with have the same statements, whether they're in North America or in Asia . . . 'How do I get more customers? How can I be more profitable? How do I protect my company's assets? How do I increase return for the shareholders?' What is different, is the maturity curve. Our business in Vietnam and Sri Lanka is much more immature, because some of the customers' requirements are less. Storing information and recovering information may be a much more salient point in Indonesia, but the concept of business recovery or disaster recovery is less of a concern. In other markets, disaster recovery, business continuity, being able to keep going in spite of natural disasters, they've thought a lot about. In markets like Japan and China and India, companies now are taking those steps you'd expect companies in North America to take.

There's a lot of controversy over US companies selling tech to China that could be used to suppress human rights. How does EMC deal with that?
I'm not commenting on China government policy, because I'm not in a position to, but here's what I can say: We will always do things that are consistent with the expectations of a US corporation. Obviously we're subject to all the laws and regulations, such as the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, things that are non-negotiable and there's very clear lines of right and wrong. And we have constant training on adherence to those. There are things that we would not necessarily feel comfortable with, but it's not our position to sit back and try and understand in every possible scenario how something might be used, because there's an infinite number of opportunities. That's not limited to China. There are many countries in the world, including our own, where you would say, is that the best way? Is that the intended use? So what we try to do is make moral, ethical, legal judgments.