EMC acquires Pivotal Labs

Issued by Redline a division of DRAFTFCB for EMC Southern Africa
Johannesburg, 29 Mar 2012

News summary:

* EMC has acquired San Francisco-based Pivotal Labs, a privately-held provider of agile software development services and tools.
* EMC will invest to expand Pivotal's reach on a global scale, bringing Pivotal's agile consulting services expertise to an even greater number of both emerging start-ups and the world's largest businesses looking to embrace cloud, big data, social and mobile in developing next-generation applications.
* Pivotal's agile project management tool (Pivotal Tracker) is currently used by over 240 000 developers around the world. EMC plans to continue to invest in Pivotal Tracker to accelerate innovation in the platform and increase adoption.
* With the acquisition of Pivotal, EMC adds to its portfolio the gold standard in agile software development for customers building big data analytic applications.
* The all-cash transaction is not expected to have a material impact on EMC GAAP or non-GAAP EPS for the full 2012 fiscal year.
* An online event entitled: 'Social Meets Big Data: Live Webcast' with executives from EMC and Pivotal Labs was broadcast on Tuesday 20 March 2012. Event details can be found at http://bit.ly/qduws or at EMC.com.

Full story:

EMC Corporation has announced it has acquired San Francisco-based Pivotal Labs, a privately-held provider of agile software development services and tools. The all-cash transaction is not expected to have a material impact on EMC GAAP or non-GAAP EPS for the full 2012 fiscal year.

Pivotal Labs enhances EMC's powerful portfolio of products and services, which are designed to enable organisations to store, analyse and take action on big data - datasets so large they break traditional IT infrastructures.

Earlier this year, EMC introduced the Greenplum Unified Analytics Platform (UAP) that delivered, for the first time, a scale-out infrastructure for analysing both structured and unstructured data. EMC also announced general availability of Greenplum Chorus - another industry first, delivering a Facebook-like social collaboration tool for Data Science teams to iterate on the development of datasets and ensure that useful insights are delivered to the business quickly. EMC brought Data Science and its chief practitioner - the Data Scientist - to the fore a year ago at the world's first Data Scientist Summit. With the addition of Pivotal Labs, EMC can now take datasets perfected in Greenplum Chorus and enable customers to rapidly build out big data applications using modern programming environments such as Ruby on Rails.

Big data is new - so new, in fact, that packaged big data applications are scarce. Most organisations dump large volumes of data into stores like Hadoop and write custom code to extract value. However, now with Pivotal Labs, the leader in agile development practices that embrace rapid iteration, test driven development, open source tools and modern frameworks, both start-ups and global enterprise customers will have the ability to quickly build new applications and services that capitalise on big data.

Founded in 1989, Pivotal Labs brings to EMC a highly differentiated and best-in-class software development methodology; world-class engineering talent in Web, mobile, big data and cloud services; and an industry-leading software development tool, Pivotal Tracker, with more than 240 000 developer customers worldwide. Pivotal's customers include Twitter, Best Buy, Groupon, Salesforce.com, EMI, Urban Dictionary, Linden Lab, Task Rabbit, The Annie E. Casey Foundation and many others. In keeping with prior successful acquisitions, EMC will invest in and organise Pivotal Labs so it can scale its business through demand driven from EMC.

Industry quotes:

“I've had the opportunity to watch Pivotal Labs for many years and have seen, firsthand, the transformational impact they deliver to their clients. Their cultural and strategic contributions at Twitter have been quite meaningful, and much of our software development process at Square is modelled on the Pivotal Labs way. I have no doubt Pivotal Labs will bring great value to EMC and its customers.”

Jack Dorsey, Executive Chairman of Twitter and CEO of Square

EMC and Pivotal Labs executive quotes:

“Last year we began work with Pivotal Labs on advanced development for EMC Greenplum Chorus, which ultimately opened Data Science teams up to an entirely new way to collaborate through socially-enabled tools and techniques. The transformative power of what we, together, could achieve for customers became quickly and abundantly clear. We're incredibly energised about the opportunity to grow this business even further, and to help customers accelerate their quest for new levels of agility and increasingly meaningful data-driven insights.”

Inana Nkanza, Country Manager, EMC Southern Africa

“We are thrilled to join EMC and look forward to accelerated innovation on Pivotal Tracker, expansion of our services, and the ability to offer a greater number of customers access to our proven methods of developing high quality, reliable software. Working with the Greenplum division to apply our unique development process to the challenges of big data is especially exciting for us.”

Rob Mee, CEO of Pivotal Labs

Additional resources:

* Learn more about Greenplum Chorus
* For the latest industry news, research, Webcasts and use cases covering big data, analytics, and the data scientist community, visit the Greenplum Media Center
* Connect with EMC via Twitter, Facebook, YouTube LinkedIn and Greenplum

Greenplum

Greenplum, a division of EMC, is driving the future of big data analytics, with breakthrough products including Greenplum Data Computing Appliance, Greenplum Database, Greenplum Community Edition, Greenplum HD, and Greenplum Chorus - the industry's first Enterprise Data Cloud platform. The division's products embody the power of open systems, cloud computing, virtualisation and social collaboration - enabling global organisations to gain greater insight and value from their data than ever before possible.

EMC

EMC Corporation is a global leader in enabling business and service providers to transform their operations and deliver IT as a service. Fundamental to this transformation is cloud computing. Through innovative products and services, EMC accelerates the journey to cloud computing, helping IT departments to store, manage, protect and analyse their most valuable asset - information - in a more agile, trusted and cost-efficient way. Additional information about EMC can be found at www.EMC.com.

EMC, Enterprise Data Cloud, Greenplum, Greenplum Chorus, Greenplum Database, Pivotal Labs and Pivotal Tracker are either registered trademarks or trademarks of EMC Corporation in the United States and other countries. All other trademarks used herein are the property of their respective owners.

Forward-looking statements

This release contains “forward-looking statements” as defined under the Federal Securities Laws. Actual results could differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements as a result of certain risk factors, including but not limited to: (i) adverse changes in general economic or market conditions; (ii) delays or reductions in information technology spending; (iii) the relative and varying rates of product price and component cost declines and the volume and mixture of product and services revenues; (iv) competitive factors, including but not limited to pricing pressures and new product introductions; (v) component and product quality and availability; (vi) fluctuations in VMware, Inc.'s operating results and risks associated with trading of VMware stock; (vii) the transition to new products, the uncertainty of customer acceptance of new product offerings and rapid technological and market change; (viii) risks associated with managing the growth of our business, including risks associated with acquisitions and investments and the challenges and costs of integration, restructuring and achieving anticipated synergies; (ix) the ability to attract and retain highly qualified employees; (x) insufficient, excess or obsolete inventory; (xi) fluctuating currency exchange rates; (xii) threats and other disruptions to our secure data centres or networks; (xiii) our ability to protect our proprietary technology; (xiv) war or acts of terrorism; and (xv) other one-time events and other important factors disclosed previously and from time to time in EMC's filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. EMC disclaims any obligation to update any such forward-looking statements after the date of this release. http://www.facebook.com/#!/EMC.Southern.Africa

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EMC acquires Pivotal Labs

Big data leader EMC and agile expert Pivotal combine to accelerate development of next-generation applications for start-ups and large enterprises.

News summary: