EMC Named "Vendor Of The Year" For Outstanding Contributions To Data Warehouse Success.

HOPKINTON, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 14, 1997--

Major Department Store Chain Purchases 2.3 Terabytes of EMC Storage

EMC Corporation announced today it has received the "1997 Vendor of the Year" award from ShopKo Stores, Inc., a $2.3 billion specialty discount retail chain. Recognizing EMC's outstanding efforts as a strategic information technology partner, ShopKo credits EMC Enterprise Storage solutions as making the most significant contributions to ShopKo's success in its use of leading-edge data warehousing and data mining technologies.

"We chose EMC as 'Vendor of the Year' because of the significant competitive advantage they've brought to our strategic data warehousing initiatives," explained Daniel Olp, ShopKo's Director of Technology Services. "The superior performance and information availability provided by EMC's Enterprise Storage solutions have allowed us to make vital sales data more readily accessible to our strategic vendors and stores. Because of EMC, we've strengthened our partnerships with our vendors, improved the selection of merchandise in our stores, and made our promotional campaigns more effective."

Green Bay, Wisconsin-based ShopKo recently purchased 2.3 terabytes of EMC Symmetrix Enterprise Storage 5700 technology, bringing its total EMC installation to nearly six terabytes, the equivalent of 1.5 billion pages of text. The new Symmetrix technology will provide ShopKo with a storage platform for testing its applications and data warehouses. ShopKo also purchased the additional capacity to handle increasing storage requirements as its business experiences rapid growth.

Olp commented, "EMC's approach of consolidating storage across diverse platforms lets us allocate the storage where it's needed. As we pursue an aggressive growth strategy, we do not have to worry about what platforms the companies we acquire are using since EMC will be able to support them.

"EMC Symmetrix is the foundation enabler behind all of our Web pages and data warehouses," added Olp. "In fact, we have decided to standardize all our enterprise storage on Symmetrix."

EMC Storage Across the Enterprise

ShopKo has consolidated 90 percent of its mainframe and open systems storage on eight EMC Symmetrix Enterprise Storage systems. ShopKo uses EMC's Enterprise Storage Platform (ESP) software to enable data from IBM RS/6000 servers, IBM RS/6000 SP Massively Parallel Processors, and IBM CMOS mainframes to reside on a single EMC system. EMC also supports ShopKo's Oracle and DB2 relational database software environments.

ShopKo's three data warehouses utilize EMC Enterprise Storage and Oracle relational database software. A 500 gigabyte merchandising data warehouse supports ShopKo's new Internet-based data mining service for suppliers. It also provides ShopKo buyers with remote Internet access to up-to-date sales information for decision support, aiding them in their negotiations with suppliers. In ShopKo's healthcare division, a data warehouse provides healthcare providers, insurance companies, and large employer groups with Internet access to prescription benefit management information. A third data warehouse manages medical and pharmaceutical claims information with Internet access. among others.

"ShopKo, a pioneer and technology innovator in the data warehousing arena, is another example of the major commitment EMC has made to supporting datdent and Chief Marketing Technical Officer. "Adbilities that only EMC Enterprise Storage solutems environments. The company has offices worldwide, trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol essed at http://www.emc.com

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