Businesses must prepare for a "digital future" where people are always connected and engaged online, according to EMC chief executive and chairman Joe Tucci.
Speaking at a keynote at the EMC World conference in Las Vegas, Tucci claimed the transition to an ever more connected world, brought on by the Internet of Things (IoT), was a "huge digital wave crashing down upon business as usual".
He added: "We're living in interesting times, from an IT perspective we live in unprecedented times.
"We have entered into the digital era and this is the biggest shift to happen since the industrial revolution.
"Businesses must decide whether they want to ride opportunities presented by this wave or crash under it."
Tucci added that the company was there to help attendees "figure out how to do that."
He identified three important business imperatives that organisations must look at so they can successfully transition into the digital age.
"First, you need to build a digital agenda," he said. "To do that, you need to rediscover the art of writing software for a new era thats more agile and pervasive."
He said the second imperative was to "transform IT to enable it to support this, and the way to do this is to move to cloud technology."
"The hybrid cloud approach is the best way for many companies transitioning with either legacy systems or which require flexibility on whether they go with private or public cloud," he claimed.
The third point for Tucci was a "laser focus on cyber risk", especially as firms shift data to the cloud.
"This is where security analytics comes in to understand what's happening and change the course," he added.
These three imperatives, alongside pushing businesses on what EMC terms the third platform, a combination of social, mobile, cloud and big data, forms the core of EMC's "Federation Strategy", which was launched by EMC last March.
He said that along with its federated companies of RSA, VCE, VMware and Pivotal, EMC aims to provide an "outcome-focused" solution to customer problems that uses best of breed technology coupled with allowing customers to choose and implement products from other vendors.
"Our core philosophy and pledge to customers is to give you a choice with no lock-in. To do this is expensive and requires scale, which EMC has," said Tucci.
The CEO reaffirmed his firm's commitment to investing in research and development.
He said EMC's strategy was to spend 12 of annual sales on innovation and new products. Another eight per cent has been earmarked for further acquisitions.
