Long-time partnership deepens

The great thing about starting a corporate research program in the 21st century is that right away, the researchers in the program begin using teleconferencing and social media to transfer their knowledge to colleagues all around the world. That's certainly what happened when the EMC Innovation Network was started by our CTO, Jeff Nick, two years ago.

Today, our research groups connect into the company from any location; thus, we don't need to locate them physically near a corresponding product development organization. (The best "cross-cutting" research usually influences more than one development organization anyway.)

At EMC, we're not building multi-million-dollar advanced development centers. We're placing our advanced researchers near the universities that can help us understand what's on the information technology horizon and connecting them to the company's already remarkable R&D.

Knowledge transfer on a global scale

The first new research group in the Innovation Network—EMC Research China—shows us that this approach works. Directed by Dr. Wenbo Mao in Beijing, EMC Research China is based near large universities in the Zhongguancun district, known as China's "Silicon Valley."

The Innovation Network program follows a simple model: "Expand knowledge locally; transfer it globally." A clear connection exists between the advanced research underway at EMC Research China and the product R&D happening at EMC labs in Beijing, Shanghai, Santa Clara, Seattle, Cambridge, and Hopkinton.

Around the world, EMC has access to top local talent inside and outside the company. We make the most of that access by pursuing research in each region that matches that region's strengths. And we network the results together.

Our advanced researchers wear two hats. First, they expand EMC's collective knowledge in strategic areas of technology (such as cloud information management or trusted virtual infrastructure, two areas EMC Research China is exploring). Second, they transfer knowledge to EMC's product development teams. For instance, they'll inject insights about trusted infrastructure into proofs of concept being built to test utility computing practices.

What they study—often in the context of university collaboration—can be general. What they teach is specific, and it is targeted to the development organization responsible for a particular EMC technology.

This continual flow of knowledge to different audiences in different timeframes and in different styles defines our research mission. Our researchers are not developing products; they're not closing business. Rather, they're providing valuable insights to employees who do perform that important work for the company.

Knowledge works

The goal of all this "knowledge work" is straightforward: to cost-effectively infuse the company's decision-making with privileged insights into emerging technologies and trends.

The insights are "privileged" because, although much of the information we gather is available to other companies, it's complicated to determine how to put that information into practice. The problem in the research community isn't a lack of information about what's coming next; actually, there's too much information. The way to sort through it is to be there as it's being produced.

For example, EMC Research China has worked for a few years on the Daoli Trusted Infrastructure research project—collaborating with Fudan University, Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST), Tsinghua University, and Wuhan University. The research effort explores how, in a multi-tenant computing environment such as a cloud, tenants can be protected from one another and the platform itself can be protected from the tenants. (Multi-tenant environments are a bit like "apartment buildings of IT." Rather than providing shelter, they supply IT platforms to large numbers of independent tenants.)

Today, for the most part, those tenants rely on the reputation of the cloud provider to keep them and their platforms secure. But as more cloud providers start competing with each other on cost, a good reputation won't be enough.

Our researchers are collaborating with these Chinese universities to understand new ways to protect tenants by, for instance, combining trusted computing with virtualization.

The Daoli project manifests itself in various ways. A public wiki (www.daoliproject.org) contains research material. University and industry collaborators discuss developments unfolding in the field. And participants sponsor academic events such as the Asia Pacific Trusted Infrastructure Technologies Conference organized in China by HUST in October 2008. Members of the EMC Innovation Network are continually present in the collaborations, interfacing the new knowledge to the rest of EMC.

Applying lessons from China

Lately, we've turned our attention to Cambridge, Massachusetts. EMC has strong, long-term relationships with many Massachusetts universities, so our technology collaborations in the Boston area aren't new. But our model is improved.

In China, we saw first-hand the value of having a research-exploration group that is separate from product and business development teams. In our Innovation Network model, this group doesn't need to be large; it just needs to be focused and chartered.

We're applying those principles to our Boston-area presence.

Beyond learning about emerging technologies and trends, we want to get to know the people investigating them. We're building a people-network in the Boston academic world. We have tremendous supporters who introduce us to their academic colleagues and show us where interesting things are happening. We'll expand our contacts and continue to gather information, meeting with faculty and students, attending seminars, and visiting labs.

The culture at MIT is especially helpful. We've been greeted warmly and been invited to work and socialize with faculty and students in various labs. We're also inviting university researchers to speak at EMC's offices—local events that have global outreach via videoconferencing, wikis, blogs, and other mixed media.

Our Innovation Network already is a collaboration among advanced technology groups from different EMC business units. In Cambridge and Boston, we're going a step further, as business units around EMC are placing some of their people into our advanced research group on a part-time basis. They complete a core group headed by the corporate CTO Office, which includes Dr. Ari Juels' team from RSA Labs sponsored by the RSA Security division. We've partially implemented this model in China, too.

These "virtual" research positions demand, at present, a one-day-per-month commitment. (Despite being a virtual team, we do have physical meetings.) In Cambridge, team members will attend seminars, talks, and luncheons focused on areas of relevance to their business unit. They'll involve their colleagues at EMC when possible and report back to their business units what they see and hear. This tight connection:

• Bridges gaps between EMC Research and EMC's product development groups.
• Helps our technologists evangelize to the product groups the advances happening in academic labs, and, ultimately, influences our product roadmaps positively.
• Exposes university researchers to real-life use cases revealing the commercial opportunities their advanced research might someday spur.
• Finds opportunities for our employees to work with the world's top university researchers and perhaps even co-author papers.

Obviously, really deep technology explorations require full-time researchers. We anticipate that organizations motivated by the initial engagements will want to try out, over time, a combination of internships and rotational assignments to increase the engagement level.

We want to partner with other companies, too, to align or combine funding to increase the investment in exploring the same base of knowledge. Accordingly, we're inviting corporate strategic partners to join us. As we sponsor research together, we pursue conversations on the side about how our companies can mutually take advantage of the lessons learned.

Similarly, as we network with academic researchers, we're likely to hear about startups and early-stage efforts to commercialize research results. Our own business development teams can help raise those activities to the next level, perhaps by providing venture capital, or maybe through a strategic partnership.

We'll also conduct business planning and market assessments to keep ourselves on track with the commercial potential of advanced IT research happening at universities and will look for opportunities to accelerate sales via those connections.

Looking beyond the horizon

Within the context of R&D, there is always an activity of exploration and discovery. The resulting knowledge then flows into the engineering and development of new products.

What we are doing is focusing entirely on that "R" in R&D. Those of us in EMC Research are not building anything or identifying what the next generation of a product should be. Instead, we're asking, "What can we help EMC to explore?" "What can we help EMC to discover?"

We see ourselves as the facilitators—the introducers—to connect the company's R&D with university research. Like a ship's radar screen looking beyond the visible horizon, pinpointing where obstacles and opportunities are, our mission is to help EMC chart the best course to the future. Academic IT researchers at universities don't think about "product categories" or launch dates; they think about how the entirety of IT is evolving. We are connecting their dots of inspiration with EMC's.

At a time when EMC must get more from its current monetary investments, the research program must be innovative about how it moves beyond what the company looks like today. If EMC is to be effective with the resources it already has, then it must align those resources internally and externally.

It can be done—as we chart a course together toward the next horizon of technology.