**OT** EMC
If any technology product emerged the hero from the recent disasters, it was
an EMC product called SRDF (for Symmetrix Remote Data Facility). For
systems that can't afford to lose a single transaction record -- as at a trading
firm or stock exchange -- the EMC product maintains a continuously updated
copy on a disk array located far from harm's way. California firms put the
mirror copy somewhere on the other side of the San Andreas Fault. EMC
was spurred to develop SRDF, in part, by the 1993 terrorist attack on the
twin towers.
EMC had 25 customers in the World Trade Center, says chief technology
officer Jim Rothnie, with another dozen in the immediate vicinity. Most had
their critical data mirrored in uptown Manhattan, New Jersey or as far away
as Texas.
The morning of the 11th, technicians in EMC's Massachusetts support facility
got instantaneous trouble signals from Manhattan customers. The tech support
folks suspected a power blackout, but it was, in fact, the first jet crashing into
the North Tower.
Within moments of the impact, the SRDF systems automatically shifted
computers over to the backup data banks. For nervous customers who were
now down to a single store of critical data, EMC created a temporary backup
facility up in Massachusetts. Working through the weekend, EMC technicians
enabled financial firms and stock exchanges to reopen their facilities and to
pick up where they'd left off.
"Obviously, the human losses were uppermost in our minds," says EMC
technical chief Rothnie. "But the data these companies were handling is vital to
our financial system. So we're proud of the role we played in protecting these
companies' livelihoods."
EMC's executive chairman, Mike Ruettgers, says that the devastating attacks
will show the importance of the lost personnel, but also the importance the
information they created. "In order to stay in business," says Ruettgers, "you
need to have both. You have to have your people and you have to have their
information."
Although the affected customers will be acquiring new EMC disk arrays to
reestablish a mirrored setup, Ruettgers doubts those orders will prove
substantial to EMC, with its $9 billion in annual sales. The computing
recession, and price wars in storage with the likes of Compaq and Sun, have
pinched EMC's margins.
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