EMC Corporation Core Competency and Relationship Management
This paper examines EMC Corporation's core competencies, focusing on its expertise in virtualization technologies, IT infrastructure systems, and cloud computing platforms. The analysis explores how EMC's two primary business segments — information infrastructure and VMware virtual infrastructure — contribute to its competitive positioning. The paper discusses the strategic significance of understanding core competencies, including their role in revealing competitive advantages and shaping organizational culture. It also describes EMC's internal relationship management structure, highlighting how cross-functional teams, knowledge-driven innovation, and IT-supported collaboration portals enable rapid product development and sustained market leadership in enterprise computing.
- Introduction to EMC Corporation's Core Competency: EMC's virtualization and infrastructure business segments defined
- Significance of Understanding Core Competencies: Why analyzing core competencies reveals competitive positioning
- Core Competency and Competitive Advantage: How EMC's R&D speed and culture drive market leadership
- Relationship Management Structure for Internal IT Partners: Knowledge-driven innovation and stage-gate product development
- IT's Role in Supporting Collaboration and Development: IT portals and cross-functional teams enabling product development
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What makes this paper effective
- Grounds abstract business concepts (core competency, competitive advantage) in specific, concrete details about EMC's business segments, revenue splits, and product development processes.
- Moves logically from defining EMC's core competency to explaining its strategic significance and then to its operational expression through relationship management — creating a coherent analytical arc.
- Incorporates multiple academic and industry sources alongside company investor relations data, lending credibility to the analysis.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper demonstrates applied business analysis by linking theoretical constructs — specifically the resource-based view of core competencies — to real organizational practices. Rather than simply defining terms, it shows how EMC's R&D-to-product pipeline, cross-functional team structure, and customer-driven innovation all operationalize the concept of core competency as a source of sustained competitive advantage.
Structure breakdown
The paper is organized around two guiding questions. The first half defines EMC's core competency, explains why understanding core competencies matters strategically, and illustrates how EMC's competencies translate into competitive differentiation. The second half shifts to the practical implementation side, describing EMC's internal relationship management structure, the stage-gate product development process, and the role IT plays in enabling collaboration through portals and knowledge-sharing platforms. Each section builds on the previous one, moving from strategy to structure to operations.
Introduction to EMC Corporation's Core Competency
The core competency of EMC Corporation is the research, development, selling, implementation, and support of its virtualization technologies, including 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 its business into two major categories: EMC information infrastructure and VMware virtual infrastructure, which together provide the company the ability to better serve its global customer base (McCarthy, Capuano, & Picotte, 2002).
The information infrastructure business comprises three different segments: information storage, the information intelligence group, and the RSA information security group. The VMware virtual infrastructure group operates as a stand-alone business unit, focused on the rapidly changing cloud computing market (EMC Investor Relations, 2012). EMC reports that its information infrastructure business generates, on average, 81% of total revenues, while the VMware virtual infrastructure business accounts for 19% (EMC Investor Relations, 2012).
Significance of Understanding Core Competencies
The significance of understanding core competencies is that, when taken together, the complete competitive advantage of a business can be better seen from the vantage point of the industry in which it competes. Analyzing the core competencies of EMC, for example, shows how successful the company is at 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 areas are revolutionizing the economics of enterprise software, and EMC is ideally positioned to benefit from this shift in IT spending.
Analyzing a company's core competencies can also provide insights into its standing relative to competitors. Such analysis can offer a very accurate picture of a company's core culture, providing insights into how it reacts to threats and attempts to transform weaknesses into strengths (Tucker, 2001). The central areas of the EMC business model that contribute most to its core competency include an exceptionally rapid process for translating R&D spending into completed products, a business model oriented toward enriching resellers while quantifying proven performance gains from using their products, and strong financial management of revenue streams and costs (EMC Investor Relations, 2012).
References
EMC Investor Relations (2012). Investor Relations. Retrieved December 13, 2012, from EMC Investor Relations and Filings with the SEC Web site:
Atuahene-Gima, K., & Wei, Y. (2011). The vital role of problem-solving competence in new product success. The Journal of Product Innovation Management, 28(1), 81.
Horsburgh, S. D. (2003). EMC Corporation. Better Investing, 52, 60–60.
Judge, P. C. (2001). Customer service: EMC Corporation. Fast Company, 138–145.
McCarthy, D., Capuano, F. A., & Picotte, K. D. (2002). EMC Corporation. London, Canada: Ivey Management Services, a division of Richard Ivey School of Business.
Smolowitz, I. (1996). Corporate culture and core competency. Business and Economic Review, 42, 29–29.
Tucker, R. B. (2001). Innovation: The new core competency. Strategy & Leadership, 29(1), 11–14.
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