Egan’s vision

Of course, the minicomputer is long gone. And there isn’t any real debate about which company is the state’s leading technology business today. Data storage king EMC Corp. of Hopkinton holds that distinction, as it did five years ago and a decade ago. That’s practically forever to companies who compete every day with technology products.

I mentioned the local tech landscape of 1979 because that was the year Richard Egan and his business partner, Roger Marino, created EMC Corp. The company marked its 30th anniversary just last week. Today, EMC ranks as the most valuable public company in Massachusetts and should generate sales approaching $15 billion a year.

Egan, who died late last week, remained a guiding force at EMC until he retired as chairman in 2001. The business he built from scratch stands as one of the towering business accomplishments in Massachusetts and beyond. You don’t run across self-made billionaires every day.

“Dick was the big-picture guy,’’ Marino recalled yesterday. “He was the visionary.’’

Egan was the one who called Marino one day long ago, inviting him to get together at the Newton Marriott to discuss the idea of starting a business. He may have had vision, but I doubt Egan could have imagined what they would eventually accomplish.

Egan and Marino were no strangers. They went to college together at Northeastern in the early 1960s and knew each other well in their business lives. They had lots of sales experience in the electronics industry but got their own business going by selling something else.

The company that would become a technology giant started by selling “system’’ furniture, the kind with holes built in to accommodate cables and other requirements of computer operations. It was a way to get money in the door of a business operating on a shoestring.

EMC opened its small office over the old Mills Falls restaurant in Newton and filled it with the same furniture the company sold, bought from the manufacturer at a 55 percent discount.

“We were very frugal,’’ says Marino. “We had very cheap rent over the restaurant and we went from there.’’

Where they went was into the business of selling electronics equipment made by other companies. From that time and for many years to come, EMC was distinguished by its aggressive and very successful sales and marketing organization. The company and its founders certainly had technical expertise, but they were really spectacular salesmen.

Marino says Egan had the vision to become a “bricks and mortar’’ company selling its own hardware and targeted add-on memory for the minicomputer systems being designed up and down Route 128 by companies like Prime Computer and Data General.

There was no shortage of companies trying to make money on computer storage, but Marino says none sold a product specifically for a Prime Computer system at that time.

“That was the one Dick chose to focus on and it was a brilliant stroke,’’ says Marino. “There were so many people in the memory business, 17 little companies, but we focused on Prime. Prime was getting $38,000 for a megabyte of memory, which was on four boards the size of pizza boxes. You can’t put half a song on that today. We sold one megabyte on one board for half the price.’’

Prime Computer was not happy. It sued EMC, alleging the upstart company stole its client list to pitch its new product. The litigation went nowhere, but EMC got accustomed to lawsuits from the big minicomputer companies it was lowballing.

Marino says EMC spent a lot of time marketing to universities because they tended to feel the pinch of tight budgets and had lots of kids working on the computers if something went wrong. Schools were the early adopters of after-market memory from companies such as EMC.

From those humble beginnings, EMC built its sales to $100 million a year before it went public in 1986 and kept growing. Despite a steep stock-price decline at the start of this decade, EMC shares have earned an average annual return of 20 percent since the company went public 23 years ago.

Many people made fortunes along the way. They all had Dick Egan to thank.

Steven Syre is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at syre@globe.com.