EMC Tells Analysts It Expects Strong GrowthEMC Tells Analysts It Expects Strong Growth

Predicting strong growth to a roomful of financial analysts can be dangerous, especially if a company doesn't deliver on its promise. But EMC Corp., the storage market leader, made that promise when it hosted its annual analyst day at the Marriott Financial Center in New York on Wednesday.

Bill Tauber, EMC's executive VP and CFO, said the company expects double-digit growth for the current quarter, the next quarter, and all of 2003. Tauber and EMC's president and CEO, Joe Tucci, predicted the growth would continue during the next year.

A key element to the growth, Tucci said, will continue to be strong software sales, fueled in part by EMC's involvement in information life-cycle-management products that help companies manage the vast amount of data that they're collecting and storing. Ultimately, those products will help companies by automating the movement and management of data from creation, across different forms of storage media, through deletion.

Tucci said information life-cycle management will drive the next major wave of EMC's growth.

EMC will continue to show strong financial results because the company is working to become more efficient and improve its gross margins, they said. "We didn't perform well last year, and we'll deliver an aggressive product road map by year's end," Tucci said. "The light at the end of the tunnel is getting brighter."