EMC, SDL Partner to Expand Web Content Management Offerings

SDL's products including Tridion, a Web-content-management platform handling brand management and targeting.

Information infrastructure solutions specialist EMC Solutions announced a global partnership with SDL, a provider of global information-management systems, which EMC said would complement the company's existing relationships in WCM (Web-content management) and WEM (Web-engagement management). The agreement with SDL is focused on joint selling and marketing.

SDL offers SDL Tridion, a WCM platform that helps enable global and multilingual Website management, multi-channel engagement through Web, mobile and e-mail, brand management and advanced targeting, profiling and personalization. SDL has more than 1,500 enterprise customers, has deployed over 170,000 software licenses and provides access to on-demand portals for 10 million customers per month. It has a global infrastructure of more than 60 offices in 35 countries.

"For our customers, it is a key requirement to provide a customer experience that drives conversion, revenue and deeper brand loyalty across channels, cultures and languages throughout the customer journey," said Jan Jaap Kolleman, CEO of SDL Web Content Management Solutions. "The agreement with EMC confirms the growing demand for solutions on a global scale and confirms increased traction for our Global information-management vision."

Paul O'Brien, vice president and general manager of the information access product division of EMC's Information Intelligence Group, said the market has spoken and customers are looking for options given their vast requirements for multilingual support and fast-to-deploy solutions to extend their online customer experiences. "The WCM/WEM market is red hot, and EMC and SDL plan to work together to provide a variety of options that will benefit our mutual customers," he said.

In February Joe Tucci, EMC's CEO and chairman, repeatedly emphasized the company's positioning in cloud computing during an analyst briefing, saying companies are on a "journey to the cloud," with the hybrid cloud as the eventual goal. Tucci said EMC has identified several "megatrends" within IT and communications, such as the popularity of mobile devices and mass connectivity, the shift toward virtualization and the explosion of information and data. These trends are driving tremendous growth in the data-storage industry as companies search for efficient ways to store and access "big data," he said. 

The data-storage, security and cloud-management-software provider on Jan. 25 reported a pair of accounting trifectas: record consolidated revenue, net income and free cash flow for both the fourth quarter and for 2010 in its entirety. In Q4 2010, EMC's consolidated revenue, which includes revenue from all its affiliates, was $4.9 billion, an increase of 19 percent from the year-earlier quarter.