Business Person of the Month

April 2012: Bob Savage, vice president and managing director, EMC Ireland

By Business & Finance
01 May 2012
Bob Savage, EMC

The US multinational posted an 11% global revenue jump last month and recently announced several new deals.

Because

Cloud computing and big-data specialists EMC announced global revenue last month of $5.1bn, a jump of 11% compared with last year. The US technology multinational’s results mark its ninth consecutive quarter of achieving year-over-year double-digit growth for consolidated revenue, net income and EPS. Bob Savage is vice president and managing director of EMC’s centre of excellence in Ovens, Co Cork, EMC’s largest manufacturing facility outside the US. EMC Ireland is increasing its market share and has recently announced new business deals that include Boylesports, Ordnance Survey Ireland, Tyndall Institute, and C2K Services for Schools, a public sector cloud project with the department of education in Northern Ireland. EMC also owns RSA Security in Shannon, Co. Clare, and VMware in Ballincollig, Co Cork.

Centre of Excellence

Established in 1988, the EMC facility in Ovens,  which employs almost 2,000 people across 600,000 sq ft, has evolved from a basic manufacturing facility into a world-class centre with 28 business functions developing products and services that help store, manage, protect and analyse information. To do this, EMC’s facility employs workers from disciplines including IT professionals, working across engineering, advanced manufacturing, software development, finance, customer service, sales and marketing, and R&D divisions.

Cloud in Ireland

Technology research company Gartner has estimated that the global cloud computing industry will be worth $149bn by 2015. Ireland currently has one of the highest concentrations of cloud computing firms in the world and the Government is aiming to make the industry one of the pillars of Irish enterprise and jobs policy. The Government and EMC also recently announced an initiative that will create a cloud innovation centre to develop cloud services for government. One of the major growth areas within the cloud computing industry is in the emergence of ‘Big Data’. Big Data is essentially the explosion in the volume of cloud-based information, something that has been driven in large part by the rapid growth in the use of smartphones. Estimates are that organisations globally will need to deal with 44 times more information by 2020 than they are managing today. Savage says that EMC it is driving the emergence of two models for coping with the changing nature of cloud computing – a private cloud which involves deploying and operating virtual infrastructure exclusively for one customer, and public cloud which makes the infrastructure available to the general public or to many industry groups and customers. A third model – the hybrid cloud – is the composition of two or more clouds, private and/or public.

History

Bob Savage has worked in EMC for over 20 years in a variety of roles. He is chairman of the Governing Body of Cork Institute of Technology (CIT) and is a board member of Enterprise Ireland. He is an electronic engineering graduate of CIT and a former lecturer there. This year, EMC partnered with CIT to develop and deliver the world’s first industry-led cloud computing degree and masters programmes remotely.

CV

  • Chairman of the governing body of Cork Institute of Technology (CIT)
  • Board member of Enterprise Ireland
  • Electronic engineering graduate of CIT and a former lecturer there

Merc logoBusiness & Finance, Business Person of the Month

Business & Finance, in association with MERC Partners, has been awarding excellence in business through the ‘Business Person of the Month’ award over the last number of years. These awards seek to recognise noteworthy achievements in business leadership, and particularly those that make a telling contribution to the wider business community in Ireland.