EMC 2011 Annual Report Download - page 11

Table of Contents
We have been granted or own by assignment approximately 3,000 patents issued by, and have approximately 1,700 patent applications pending with,
the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, as well as a corresponding number of international patents and patent applications. While the durations of our patents
vary, we believe that the durations of our patents are adequate relative to the expected lives of our products.
We have used, registered or applied to register certain trademarks and copyrights in the United States and in other countries. We also license certain
technology from third parties for use in our products and processes and license some of our technologies to third parties.
Employees
As of December 31, 2011, we had approximately 53,600 employees worldwide, of which approximately 11,000 were employed by or working on
behalf of VMware. None of our domestic employees is represented by a labor union, and we have never suffered an interruption of business as a result of a
labor dispute. We consider our relations with our employees to be good.
Financial Information About Segments, Foreign and Domestic Operations and Export Sales
EMC operates its business in two broad categories: EMC Information Infrastructure and VMware Virtual Infrastructure.
Sales and marketing operations outside the United States are conducted through sales subsidiaries and branches located principally in Europe, Latin
America and the Asia Pacific region. We have five manufacturing facilities: two in Massachusetts, which manufacture storage products and security products
for the North American markets; two in Ireland, which manufacture storage products and security products for markets outside of North America; and one in
North Carolina, which manufactures storage products for domestic markets. We also utilize contract manufacturers throughout the world to manufacture or
assemble our Data Domain, Isilon, Iomega and, in limited amounts, other information infrastructure products. See Note S to the consolidated financial
statements for information about revenues by segment and geographic area.
Sustainability
We recognize that the long-term success of our business depends on an economically vital, inclusive and educated society as well as on a healthy
environment. Therefore, we strive to make decisions and operate our business in a sustainable way. Our sustainability priorities include improving our
performance and collaborating with industry peers, governments and non-governmental organizations to advance energy, climate change and material use and
waste priorities; providing technologies and services to address some of the world's challenges, such as energy, healthcare and delivery of government
services; upholding the protection of human rights and investing in furthering education, innovation and inclusion for our employees and in communities
around the world; and supporting EMC's continued financial success and increasing shareholder value through our approach to corporate sustainability,
commitment to good corporate governance and maintaining customer and community trust.
We focus our environmental sustainability efforts on reducing impacts from our operations and supply chain, creating value by transforming our
customers' information infrastructures to be more efficient and decrease energy use, and collaborating with our peers to develop standards and metrics. Our
top environmental priorities are energy and climate change, material use and waste, and water.
We focus on energy because our primary greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions arise from the generation of electricity used to run our business, support our
supply chain and power our products. We have set global targets to reduce our energy consumption and GHG emissions in our own operations and are
collaborating with our suppliers to find efficiencies upstream. We recognize the opportunity to reduce global GHG emissions through the application of IT,
and through our Design for Environment program, we have incorporated energy efficiency as a key objective in our engineering process. In 2011, we
introduced a new generation of storage products with industry-leading power supply efficiency and are delivering Cloud Computing capabilities such as data
deduplication, fully automated storage tiering (FAST), and virtualization that enable our customers to run their IT infrastructures more efficiently.
We are continuously striving to reduce material use in our products and operations, recycle what cannot be reused, and handle any waste with integrity
and responsibility for the environment and human health. We are working with our suppliers and industry peers to identify substitutes for materials that can
damage our ecology and human health. We have eliminated the use of leaded solder in our products and in 2011 exceeded our goal to reduce brominated
flame retardants by 50% in all new printed circuit boards. We are actively working to reduce the use of hazardous substances such as polyvinyl chlorides and
phthalates in our products.
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