EMC is a leading provider of IT storage hardware solutions to promote data backup and recovery and accelerate the journey to cloud computing. We recently met with the Vice President, Global Services Asia Pacific & Japan EMC Corporation, Mr. David Wirt. We got some insight on what EMC does and why they were keen to be part of the Formula 1 circus with the Lotus F1 team.
QUESTION: Why Formula 1? Why now DTM, WRC or Touring Cars?
Answer: Viewership is important……..brand impact and the relationship.
QUESTION: How many of the F1 teams us your storage solutions?
Answer: Lotus for now is the only team using our storage solutions. It helps to keep their IT needs from scalability, backup, cloud backup and so on. Most F1 teams are restricted to the number of people at each and every race and so having fast reliable storage allows them to work remotely and extend data sharing very fast.
QUESTION: F1 is losing viewership, how does that affect your sponsorship dollars?
Answer: Losing in terms of the consumer side, maybe, but corporate side is going up and we target only the corporate sector and this is keeping us up. The current race has surprised people on the trackside and this will change soon.
QUESTION: What do you want from this interview. When was the last time you heard someone talking about F1 with pure excitement.
Answer: We are looking at getting the consumer to understand what we do. For example our mobile devices. We carry a few devices. 250 different sensors in a race car with 50 MB of data with 1 terabyte of data collected on every race. This makes a difference when you need your data secure and with fast access. EMC is offering quick and fast data collection and to keep the race information current. All this data can be analysed and used to better the performance of the race vehicle.
This way a lot of the work can be done remotely at the race team’s corporate headquarters and the analysed data we store and keep it safe. So the 250 plus sensors on the car will be able to read and understand what is going on with the car in real time.
QUESTION: So you are part of the F1 team in every race. EMC is helping the team race?
Answer: Yes, as the race is in progress, EMC takes all the information and data from the 250 plus sensors and send it immediately to the Lotus headquarters where engineers are digesting the information and sends back the information to better the performance and ensure the cars are working with the driver.
QUESTION: Who is your next biggest rival?
Answer: IBM and we do not have 1 single big competitor. Yes we have our competitors in the race…but they don’t have sponsorship in the race.
