The purpose of business intelligence (BI) is to better support business decision-making by creating historical, current, and predictive views of business operations. This requires tapping into a wide variety of data sources and gaining access to analysis tools that will help you wade through a sea of information to gain the necessary insights.

A successful business intelligence implementation requires more than knowledge of technology—it requires deep business expertise and an understanding of the decision-makers’ perspective. At EMC we understand information management challenges and can address them in innovative ways.

We involve business users at the beginning of every BI initiative. This ensures that we identify the right requirements and deliver systems with high success rates and broad business impact. By using methodologies which range from “voice-of-the-customer” and scenario planning to business modeling and scorecards, we create business intelligence systems that will guide strategic decision-making at the enterprise or departmental level. Our industry and technology expertise, combined with a disciplined approach, ensure delivery of a system that will provide the critical information that leads to improved operational and financial performance.

Today’s global workplace comprises virtual teams of employees, customers, and partners, bringing increased pressure on organizations to create collaboration environments that make it easy to discuss and share ideas. Enterprise portals can be used to manage distributed content, integrate data from disparate applications, serve as a business intelligence platform, or provide an environment for managing workflows.

Determining the best strategy for implementation requires more than simply selecting and installing a technology platform. It requires an understanding of how the platform fits into the organization’s strategic long-term vision. An effective strategy also requires planning for compliance, governance, taxonomy, user experience, information architecture, and security.

At EMC, we draw on our proven methodology and expertise in business process analysis, application integration, and workflow automation to create an intuitive collaboration system that will be simple to manage and will scale with the business. We take a phased approach to implementation that guides you through all stages from envisioning to deployment. By focusing on user experience, we ensure that your system will support both business goals and the users’ needs, desires, and behaviors.

Unified communications (UC) systems integrate real-time delivery of messaging, voice, and conferencing to enable easier, more direct collaboration. The components of UC can include instant messaging, telephony, video, e-mail, and voicemail. Presence—the ability to know where communications’ recipients are and if they are available, in real time—is also a key part of UC. The wide marketplace of vendor products and the evolving nature of the technology can make it challenging for an organization to understand how to select and deploy the right technology.

EMC understands the complexity of UC technology and that enterprises already have large investments in existing communication infrastructures. EMC consultants understand that there is no “one size fits all,” and that a multi-vendor solution is inevitable. We help you evaluate enterprise communications needs, analyze the options, and determine how these options fit within your long-term business strategy. We can then configure, integrate, and deploy your unified communications system to meet your unique requirements.

IDC’s white paper, "The Diverse and Exploding Digital Universe”, warns that in the coming years IT organizations will need to:

• Collaborate cross-functionally with business units.
• Spearhead the development of organization-wide procedures for information governance.
• Deploy new tools and standards into the organization to optimize data management.

What’s more, EMC research indicates that over one million storage professionals will be needed globally by 2012. So, are you ready?

The rapid growth in digital information is demanding significant growth in the number of trained storage professionals, resulting in a shortfall that will impact the availability and management of data. We understand the challenges you face when searching for the right skills for your information infrastructure and we are committed to helping organizations close the expanding knowledge gap.

Our approach is simple—provide training that is relevant, timely, convenient, and cost-effective. Our goal is to ensure that you maximize the return on your EMC investment. EMC’s award-winning Education Services can help you to develop your team’s skills and improve your organization’s productivity with our open storage technology curriculum, EMC technology-specific learning paths, or EMC Proven™ Professional Certification.