Few top companies fell further or harder at the end of the dot-com boom than EMC, a maker of information storage equipment. EMC's market capitalization peaked at $225 billion in late 2000—more than the combined share value of the six leading global auto manufacturers—and then fell by a staggering 90 percent over the next nine months. Its record loss of nearly $1 billion during the third quarter of 2001 left observers wondering if the "king of storage" was about to be unceremoniously dethroned.

Since then EMC, based in Hopkinton, Massachusetts, has turned itself around spectacularly. The company has repositioned its strategy by supplying small and midsize businesses as well as major banks, airlines, and others at the top end of the market. It has also diversified into software and services through a string of acquisitions, thereby reducing its previous dependence on hardware. Today's results make for impressive reading: first- and second-quarter earnings in 2005 rose by 93 percent and 52 percent, respectively; revenues are back to precrash levels (after eight consecutive quarters of double-digit growth); and EMC's core activities are now growing at twice the overall storage industry's rate. The numbers, though, merely tell the outline of the story.

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