EMC Corporation Analysis How would you describe the core competency of EMC Corp? What is the significance of understanding core competencies? Do core competencies provide competitive advantages or value to organizations?

The core competency of EMC Corporation is the research and development, selling, implementing and supporting of their virtualization technologies incouding IT infrastructure systems and platforms. EMC's depth of expertise in virtualization and infrastructure technologies has made the company one of the leading providers of cloud computing platforms, one of the fastest-growing segments of the enterprise computing industry today (Horsburgh, 2003). EMC has structured their business into two major categories incouding EMC information infrastructure and VMWare virtual infrastructure, which provides the company the ability to better serve its global base of customers (McCarthy, Capuanuo, Picotte, 2002). The information infrastructure business is comprised of three different segments including information storage, information intelligence group and the RSA information security group. The VMWare virtual infrastructure group is a stand-alone business unit as it is focused on the rapidly changing cloud computing market (EMC Investor Relations, 2012). EMC reports that their information infrastructure business generates on average 81% of total revenues and the VMWare virtual infrastructure business, 19% (EMC Investor Relations, 2012).

The significance of understanding core competencies is that when they are taken together, the complete competitive advantage of a business can better to seen from the vantage point of the industry they compete in. Analyzing core competencies of EMC for example shows how successful the company is in quickly translating research and development (R&D) into virtualization systems and platforms that enable greater performance of cloud computing and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications (EMC Investor Relations, 2012). These two...

Analysis of core competencies can provide a very accurate analysis of the core culture of a company, providing insights into hwo they react to threats and attempt top transform weakness into strengths (Tucker, 2001). The central areas of the EMC business model that contribute most to their core competency include their exceptionally rapid processes in place to translate R&D spending and investment into completed products, a business model oriented towards enriching resellers while also quantifying the proven performance gains as a result of using their products, and strong financial management of their revenue streams and costs (EMC Investor Relations, 2012).
These components that comprise the core competency of EMC also directly impact the products and services delivered, as EMC has been able to deliver two to three product generations ahead of its competitors on key virtualization technologies (EMC Investor Relations, 2012). This has made the internal culture of the company very fast-paced even for a high technology company, and also greatly increased the efficiency of the knowledge acquisition processes in the company. EMC deliberately chose an organizational structure for its support of highly collaborative processes that span hardware and software development teams. EMC is also relies on a series of internal reviews that bring together hardware, software and systems teams to the common objective of creating a unified, highly reliable system component or entire platform that will best meet the requirements of their enterprise customers (EMC Investor Relations, 2012). The knowledge acquisition process within EMC is based on creating cross-functional teams that can bring in specific hardware, software…