EMC World 2011: EMC teams with Google for data search

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EMC today revealed it has been working with Google to integrate search capabilities into its storage products.

The company made the announcement at its annual EMC World conference as it continued to warn customers of the deluge of data' hitting the industry right now.

"You have such a tsunami of data, how do you find anything?" asked Rich Napolitano, "So, we looked in the industry for who was the best partner in search [and] it was just clear."

An engineer on the project told IT PRO the new integration of Google's Search Appliance (GSA) only started development in the last quarter, but it had quickly turned it around to offer the new capability early in the second half of this year.

It comes as an optional connector on EMC's VNX products and is not compatible with other vendor's storage. It can also be bought as a separate software add-on for current systems.

"This integration accelerates from a factor of 10 to 100 the search capabilities and we are very excited about this partnership," added Napolitano.

"The partnership with Google search allows you to search and quickly index vast amount of data with what previously took you minutes or hours now happening in seconds."

The search capabilities allow for users to index targeted content with a more granular approach to specific data sets. The VNX will automatically send notifications to the GSA when changes are made to the storage, ensuring it keeps up to date.

"Companies are pack ratsthey hang onto a lot of data, in every nook and cranny of an IT infrastructure," said Benjamin Woo, programme vice president of worldwide storage systems research at IDC. "If they can't find that information, it becomes less valuable to them and their employees and customers."

"Together, Google and EMC are empowering employees with information. Faster access to information equals faster time to value creation [and] this is a powerful combination for any organisation."

Jennifer Scott

Jennifer Scott is a former freelance journalist and currently political reporter for Sky News. She has a varied writing history, having started her career at Dennis Publishing, working in various roles across its business technology titles, including ITPro. Jennifer has specialised in a number of areas over the years and has produced a wealth of content for ITPro, focusing largely on data storage, networking, cloud computing, and telecommunications.

Most recently Jennifer has turned her skills to the political sphere and broadcast journalism, where she has worked for the BBC as a political reporter, before moving to Sky News.