David DeWalt, President of the EMC Software Group, speaks from his experience of eighteen years in the technology industry. Tying together ideas from Thomas Friedman's book "The World is Flat" and John Hagle's "The Sustainable Edge", he talks about the requirements of combining resources scattered around the globe to leverage them effectively. He speaks on ways to bring innovation to these resources by being flexible in the ever-changing marketplace.

Using his own company as an example, DeWalt shows how a hugely profitable company like EMC no longer does much R&D but now focuses on A&D, acquisition and development, absorbing approximately two companies every quarter. He goes on to describe how EMC has developed a strategy of getting newly aquired products and companies up and running from the start.

As EMC has offshored, aquired, and built itself up, it has found management of resources is critical. With resources located around the world, companies have been evolving towards moving consultancy and support to the edge. DeWalt describes how project management still sits with the customer, but consultancy and support are now centralized in 24/7 call centers in offshore locations such as India. Strategies have to be developed to deal with differences in time zones, culture, and language to get disparate resources to interoperate effectively. These are lessons large companies have to learn to be able to win, and are very important for smaller companies as well.

The software development industry is changing rapidly, and companies large and small have to step quickly to keep up.