7. The amount of digital information created and replicated worldwide is growing 60 per cent a year, EMC storage president David Donatelli said, quoting IDC research. This amounted to 173 exabytes in 2006, a number that will grow to 1,773 exabytes by 2011.

"During good times and bad times, people's information continues to grow an average of 60 per cent per year," Donatelli said. "Data centers don't get 60 per cent more power and floor space each year. They have a constant challenge to keep up with this information."

70 per cent of information is created by individuals, but 85 per cent is managed by businesses, he said.

8. EMC generated US$5.4 billion in revenue in 2002, and US$13.2 billion in 2007. It plans to spend US$1.8 billion a year on R&D going forward, and has 5,000 R&D technical employees in storage alone.

9. HP's US$13.9 billion purchase of EDS isn't putting a damper on Tucci's view of his partnership with the IT outsourcer. Tucci said EDS will remain an important part of EMC's go-to-market strategy. "A lot of [EDS] customers were sold on the benefits of the best of breed Agility Alliance," he said, referring to an EDS partner program. "A lot of those customers ... like EMC storage. I believe EMC and EDS will be great partners long into the future as we provide customers a really good value."

10. EMC World featured 556 sessions and keynote addresses, largely technical discussions of EMC technologies and products. Example session titles: Managing VMware with ControlCenter 6.0; Introduction to EMC DiskXtender and File Archiving; and Making a Pragmatic Move to ITIL v3.