He also commanded his sales force to start hawking Clariion just as hard as Symmetrix.

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It costs half the price of a similar Symmetrix and boasts the fiber channel that Symmetrix lacks.

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In January, EMC released its Symmetrix system, which incorporates a combination of spinning disks and solid-state drives built by STEC.

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Symmetrix's roots go back to 1987, when Richard Egan hired a brilliant Israeli engineer, Moshe Yanai, to develop the device.

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According to Tucci, EMC expects Symmetrix DMX to account for one-half of Symmetrix revenue in the current quarter, which ends in March.

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But Joe Tucci concedes that EMC sellers shunned the cheap Clariion box and continued to lead with Symmetrix, failing to recognize that customers wanted cheaper systems.

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Tucci, chief executive of EMC (nyse: EMC - news - people ), was in New York to unveil the latest generation of EMC's flagship data-storage system, called Symmetrix DMX.

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Yanai, who holds at least 20 patents on the Symmetrix architecture, cut an uncommonly lucrative deal that paid him a 1% slice of Symmetrix revenues, with another 1% share divvied up among his five lieutenants.

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The key question: Did Yanai's 1% cut of Symmetrix sales make him reluctant to scrap the aging technology in favor of a newer approach? (Yanai declined to be interviewed.) Michael Ruettgers, EMC's executive chairman, who was CEO from 1992 until handing the job to Tucci in January, says that Yanai has never put his personal interest ahead of the company's.

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