David J. Barton
Dan Dougherty has led EMC‘s work in the federal market for close to four years in his role as vice president of the data storage and technology provider’s federal division.
His more than two-decade career at the company has included service as a VP for the company’s APJ sales strategy and as an area sales manager.
In this conversation with ExecutiveBiz, Doughtery overviews the government’s push to redefine how it approaches information technology and what agencies want in converged infrastructure.
ExecutiveBiz: What has made EMC such a compelling place for you to work over your more than 20 years with the company?
Dan Dougherty: Our executive team has very effectively identified the big trends in business and public sector. Cloud, social, mobile and big data are disruptive trends that taken together, are redefining the way we work and live. They are also redefining the applications and technology we use. EMC is leveraging these trends (what IDC calls the “Third Platformâ€) to meet our customer’s needs and support their innovation.
EMC is a federation of three companies. First is the EMC information infrastructure business, which is focused on accelerating and delivering cloud infrastructure and IT-as-a-service. This includes our best-of-breed information storage, information protection and information intelligence solutions.
The second part of our business is VMware, focused on the software‑defined data center – an approach that virtualizes, pools and automates the compute, network and storage resources in the data center, so customers can derive the greatest value from their IT stack.
Third is Pivotal. Pivotal is enabling the creation of enterprise strength software applications that leverage big & fast data – on a single, cloud independent platform. These three businesses are predicated on the customer having choice. Choice means supporting open architectures and open standards and avoiding vendor lock in.
One of my favorite examples of how EMC can have a meaningful impact on the mission is through big data analytics. agencies want to reduce the deficit by reducing fraud, waste and abuse. The Office of the Inspector General issued a report on the tremendous number of fraud investigations currently underway at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).
The report estimates the government can save between $75 and $250Â billion by reducing fraudulent claims and payments. EMC delivers big data analytical capabilities to support agencies in their efforts to prevent fraud.
ExecutiveBiz: Where is the market for cloud heading in your perspective?
Dan Dougherty: The question many folks in the government have is, ‘How do I get there?’ It’s easier said than done. Often, cloud is associated with technology, but we believe that delivering cloud is truly a combination of people, process and technology. Through our consulting functions, we enable our customers to determine the right path forward as they work to leverage cloud and hybrid cloud models.
Government is focused on many of the same trends as private industry – cloud, mobile, social and big data. What makes the opportunity different are the acquisition strategies to get there, as well as the security, trust and compliance that are required to fully take advantage of those opportunities. Those factors have to be in place before the government can transition to new technologies, due to data privacy concerns and threats to our national security.
From a technology perspective, more and more public sector customers are asking for converged infrastructure and for a faster path to cloud services. Converged infrastructure is a preassembled, pretested pool of compute, network, storage and management orchestration.
EMC is the market leader in converged infrastructure with our partners Cisco, VMware and VCE. VCE, formed by Cisco and EMC with investments from VMware and Intel, accelerates the adoption of converged infrastructure and cloud-based computing models that dramatically reduce the cost of IT while improving time to delivery for cloud services.
ExecutiveBiz: How are you allocating your resources to support agencies in an uncertain time and competitive market?
Dan Dougherty: We have built practice areas, or areas of specialized expertise, that align with the mission. The practice areas include specialists on our teams that have very deep intimate knowledge and our EMC consulting organization. We focus on people, processes and technology and our customers need all three for success.
Driving our innovative culture, EMC invests significantly more than competitors in research, development and acquisitions every year. We are a $23.2Â billion company (FY 2013) and we are committed to continued innovation.
ExecutiveBiz: What would you single out as some of your top accomplishments?
Dan Dougherty: I’m proud of our team’s contributions to the community. Examples include our work surrounding fraud, waste and abuse and supporting government programs that leverage satellite data to predict the next big weather event and save lives. These programs make a real difference to our nation. I’m also very proud of our focus veteran’s issues.
Three years ago, we made veterans in the workforce a priority. We were recently recognized with an FCW 100 Award for these efforts – which have included our “Military Careers Translator†to match talented veterans with opportunities at EMC, educating recruiters on the value of veteran candidates, strengthening our Employee Assistance Program and expanding mentoring initiatives.
EMC was also a founding member of the 100,000 Jobs Mission – a joint initiative of 11 companies that set out to hire 100,000 veterans by 2020 and has grown to 130 corporate members that have hired more than 117,000 veterans to date, increasing the Mission’s goal to 200,000 by 2020. We have worked to share what we learned – for example, we hosted a panel of veterans discussing their transition to the workforce on WTOP.
ExecutiveBiz: What are you most excited about at the company?
Dan Dougherty: The government is in the early phases of its journey to redefine IT and run IT-as-a-Service, leveraging hybrid cloud and big data. Both cloud and big data have the opportunity to be tremendously impactful to our government and the citizens they support. EMC’s portfolio has never been more relevant to the mission and our company continues to invest in the technology and people that can have an impact on our ability to deliver these solutions to the government.
