EMC Launches Atmos, Its First Cloud-Building Platform

EMC, one of the world's six largest IT corporations, isn't necessarily seen as an innovator in the data storage industry. In fact, its history has been that of a savvy company that recognizes innovation when it sees it, then uses its considerable financial power to acquire and go to market with it.

To wit: It has acquired some 40 companies since 2003.

On Nov. 10, however, EMC showed that it is now officially a next-gen IT creator when it comes to cloud storage development.

EMC introduced Atmos, its first cloud-building appliance package—a combination of software and industry-standard x86 server hardware that can result in a multi-petabyte, enterprise-level cloud storage infrastructure.

"This represents about two years' worth of development," Jon Martin, director of product marketing for EMC's Cloud Computing group, told me. "It was designed and built by our global development team—completely internally developed product by EMC."

Atmos was developed to help address the unabated growth of unstructured data being compiled, Martin said.

Click here to read a list of key features
in the Atmos cloud-building package.

"Over a billion songs are being shared on the Internet, tens of billions of photos are being shared, and so on. What we're talking about is everything from the smallest ringtones to the largest HD video files that exist," Martin said.

Atmos is aimed at Web 2.0 and Internet providers, and telecommunications, media and entertainment companies so they can securely build and deliver cloud-based information-centric services and applications at a massive scale by providing the capabilities of centralized management and automated placement of information globally, Martin said.

Next: What the Analysts Say About Atmos >>