The recession may be coming, but enterprise storage companies are likely to fare well, despite any capital spending slowdown. And EMC will fare better than most, according to recent CIO surveys by a clutch of US investment banks.

Spending on data storage technology is increasingly non-discretionary, Smith Barney analyst John Dean argues. "The need for data inexorably expands by vitue of information technology applications. Data storage, as the fundamental key to the management of information, constitutes the central strategic asset of the leading companies in nearly every industry today."

BT Alex Brown analyst Philip Rueppel agreed that storage system markets remain robust. EMC was well positioned to grow faster than the market, because of its status as an independent supplier of storage systems, he said.

EMC is one of the world's big four enterprise storage vendors, ranking alongside Compaq, IBM and Sun Microsystems. Unlike its major competitors, EMC sells direct. This month, the company entered the ranks of Fortune Magazine's annual list of "The World's most admired companies".

And it is so pleased with the accolade that it has issued a press release to tell the World just how much it admires the company. Massachusetts-based EMC tipped in at number 4 with a bullet in Fortune Magazine's computer company category, behind IBM, Intel and HP, and ahead of Dell Computer, IBM, Sun Microsystems and Compaq. The company has also been named as the one of the world's 100 Best-Managed Companies by Industry Week. The question is: how much is down to good management, and how much is down to riding a bull technology? ®