EMC's 2Q Revenue Up, Profits Down

EMC's second quarter revenue inched up 3%, but its profit fell 43% as the storage giant said it was positioning itself to take advantage of the economy when it stabilizes. In addition, EMC said it has successfully closed its acquisition of Data Domain.

"When IT markets resume to more normal spending rates, we expect EMC will return to generating double-digit revenue growth," said Joe Tucci, EMC chairman, president, and CEO, in a statement. "We are focused on four of the hottest and fastest-growing areas of IT spending -- next-generation fully virtualized data centers, cloud computing, virtualized desktops and clients, and next-generation backup, recovery and archive solutions."

Revenue for the quarter totaled $3.26 billion and net income was $205.2 million. EMC's majority-owned VMware unit recorded $455 million in revenue for the quarter.

The company reiterated its previous predictions of slow growth for the full year due to the dismal worldwide economic conditions.

"Continued focus on helping customers address their most pressing IT priorities helped EMC's information Infrastructure business achieve balanced sequential revenue growth across all major geographies and in every business unit," said the company's chief financial officer David Goulden.The company also disclosed more information about its $2.1 billion acquisition of Data Domain, which is a specialist in deduplication -- the process whereby duplicate files are identified and consolidated. EMC said 90.3% of outstanding Data Domain shares -- not including the 3.9% that EMC owned -- were tendered in the bruising bidding contest with NetApp Inc.

EMC plans to use Data Domain to build a new product division within EMC's Information Storage business.