EMC Earns Third Consecutive SSPA Star Award For Excellence In Software Support

Hopkinton, - October 07, 2003 -

The Service and Support Professionals Association (SSPA), the leading industry association for IT support professionals, today announced that EMC corporation (NYSE:EMC), the leading provider of information storage systems, software, networks and services, has been awarded the SSPA STAR Award for the third consecutive year for outstanding mission-critical support. The STAR award is one of the service industry's highest honors and is presented each year by the Service and Support Professionals Association (SSPA) at its annual SSPA Conference@Savannah.

Bill Rose, Founder/CEO of SSPA, said, "The STAR Award serves as the highest form of recognition in the service and support industry and EMC's receipt of the award for mission-critical support for the third consecutive year is a testament to the company's legendary 'do whatever it takes' approach to customer support."

Leo Colborne, EMC's Vice President of Global Customer Service, said, "The relationship between EMC and its customers is as much about service and support as it is about the innovative technology we provide. Keeping operations up and running at all times is a critical requirement for our customers. We will continue to work hard to make our customers successful and are honored to be recognized for our third consecutive SSPA award."

World-Class Service

Widely-regarded as the benchmark for support excellence in the IT industry, EMC Customer Service has direct service presence in 47 countries and service partners in 28 countries, representing every major region of the world. Customer Support Centers are also located globally, including Hopkinton, Mass.; Duluth, Ga.; Alexandria, Va; Cork, Ireland; Tokyo, Japan; and Sydney and Melbourne, Australia.

The EMC service infrastructure includes advanced remote support systems that automatically monitor and diagnose errors and events on a 24 x 7 basis, so even the slightest potential error can be identified and corrected before critical problems arise. EMC Customer Service maintains a rapid escalation process that ensures problems are resolved within hours, not days, and conducts root cause analysis to eliminate future issues. Its call handling process ensures all customers - regardless of the severity level of their case - are informed of service issue status.

EMC's significant investments in interoperability testing and its expansive set of cooperative support agreements across all areas of the IT infrastructure enable EMC to offer the most complete storage service and support in the industry today. EMC has forged cooperative support agreements (CSA) with over 150 vendors and has established joint support centers with Oracle and Microsoft.

About SSPA

Founded in 1989, the Service & Support Professionals Association (SSPA) was formed to focus on the specific needs of service executives who are responsible for support centers and overall customer relations. Today, the SSPA represents over 22,300 service professionals at 2,500 support centers worldwide. These executives look to SSPA to provide insight into the future of support services, a road map of best practices within our industry and access to the best service and support vendors. SSPA has become the center of support providing a reliable and comprehensive resource for news, research, benchmarking, standards and collaboration.

SSPA was created for professionals, managers and executives that make their living in the IT support services community. It is not a generic, one-size-fits all website where nobody ever feels like they belong. SSPA is dynamic, interactive, living resource specifically designed for the unique needs of support professionals. This exciting virtual community creates a forum for constant interaction with peers, industry experts, technology vendors and much more.

For more information regarding the SSPA and other related divisions, log on to www.thesspa.com or send an email to info@thesspa.com.

About EMC

EMC Corporation (NYSE: EMC) is the world leader in information storage systems, software, networks and services, providing automated networked storage solutions to help organizations extract the maximum value from their information, at the lowest total cost, across every point in the information lifecycle. Information about EMC's products and services can be found at www.EMC.com.