EMC World 2011 lured over 10,000 attendees and is said to be the biggest event of its kind to date. But before moving forward too quickly, it is also interesting to know whether EMC’s goals from last year have panned out—especially their quest to accelerate their journey in the private cloud.

Current developments within EMC’s backyard would tell you that they have pursued this objective and are relatively triumphant if not 100%. A recent announcement from the EMC Connectrix Family notes that they will offer the first 16 gigabits per second (Gbps) Fibre Channel switching technology appealed well to the public. Following the release of Q1 earnings results of the business, impressions that the customers have confidence that they will largely benefit from private and public cloud is astonishing.

In an interview with SiliconANGLE.com’s John Furrier and Wikibon.org’s Dave Vellante,  VP of VMware Technology Alliance, Chad Sakac, mentioned that their ultimate target this year is to make storage management completely invisible, make it transparent and to draw policy out of abstraction layer. This is somehow divergent from EMC’s direction in 2010, calling storage management “sexy.”  But even with the rollercoaster ride that EMC embarked on from 2010 until today, one thing is certain: VMware will still be a decisive component of the company’s growth and s  ustainability in the private cloud. Accelerating the journey to your cloud—this is what Paul Maritz, CEO of VMware will touch base on during day of two of the event.

Miniman notes that “EMC has realized that when it comes to cloud, the journey is more important than the final destination. Customers will not be changing processes overnight and the methods and structures needed to succeed will take time to develop. Since last year’s EMC World, EMC’s message is moving from private cloud to hybrid clouds. Hybrid clouds bring service providers prominently into the discussion.

EMC looks to differentiate itself from the likes of IBM and HP by supplying infrastructure for, but not becoming a service provider itself. As discussed last year, VMware is a critical component of EMC’s cloud strategy. Since last year, Big Data has emerged as a new area of focus, including the acquisition of Greenplum. Cloud and Big Data intersect to form new opportunities for EMC.”

This year’s EMC World event focuses on big data meeting the cloud. The stage of this occasion has already paved the way for serious and seemingly lucrative partnerships including that of EMC and Box.net that will grant users to access the “Documentum” repository straight from the cloud with “Box” and International Computerware (ICI) merging with Auto Virt to integrate software across professional services and systems. Perhaps, one of the most significant highlights of the event will be the mounting potential of VMware—where EMC will be investing a whopping $2 billion for R&D within the next few months.