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"During the Gold Rush," EMC Corporation's Michael C. Ruettgers (MBA '67) reminded a Burden Hall audience last September, "a lot of infrastructure people got rich, along with a handful of gold panners." That's why, amid the glitz and glory of the high-tech revolution, Ruettgers is perfectly happy providing an unglamorous but essential (and lucrative) support service. EMC stores, safeguards, organizes, and makes instantly accessible the currency that, in the information age, constitutes companies' inherent wealth: their corporate data, or "enterprise information," as EMC calls it.
During his eleven-year tenure at the Hopkinton, Massachusetts-based firm, Ruettgers, who became CEO in 1992, has guided EMC to the top of its market. With $1 billion in profits expected this year (compared with $30 million the year Ruettgers became CEO), EMC is one of Wall Street's hottest companies.
"Technology is very different from any other industry; it's winner take all," explained Ruettgers, whom Business Week has named one of the world's top 25 executives. "There's a clearly defined winner's circle, and if you're in it, you're way, way ahead." But to maintain its leadership position, Ruettgers noted, EMC has spent some $1 billion during the 1990s developing its own software for data storage and retrieval.
Emphasis on R&D and quality control has been a key to EMC's success. But Ruettgers, often noted for making brilliant strategic moves, does not overlook the people side of the equation. "Strategy counts for only about 10 percent," he said. "We focus on execution." Not surprisingly, therefore, EMC demands topflight performance: some five hundred of its managers are paid according to their attainment of quarterly goals. "People who don't achieve the goals for two consecutive quarters usually don't get to participate in a third," Ruettgers said. "A team can't be successful unless the whole team is producing."
Despite increasing competition, the future looks busy for EMC, with a new mother lode - the Internet - waiting to be mined. "Some dotcoms are already collecting more information than the big banks and the major telcos," Ruettgers said. "We'd like to make them customers."
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