Global Partner Summit begins for EMC Business Partners today, but the week kicked off yesterday with a “beastly” start at EMC World 2015.

I’m talking the official unveiling of XtremIO 4.0. Lovingly dubbed “The Beast” by customers and EMCers, XtremIO 4.0 more than doubles previous density with 40TBs per X-Brick and offers configurations of up to eight 40TB X-Bricks. And it’s a free upgrade! Get the 4.0 lowdown from Virtual Geek and EMC Presales President Chad Sakac.

“The Beast” was just one of many Day 1 announcements.

Here’s a quick Day 1 recap.

During the first general session, EMC CEO David Goulden set the stage for the many ‘hugely important announcements’ this week at EMC World 2015. He let the audience know that these solutions will help everyone be more successful in their careers; but cautioned all attendees to remember the pace of change in the IT industry isn’t slowing down—it’s actually accelerating.

With that, he noted that each and every one of us is part of the Information Generation. He shared the results of our recent survey of 3,000 global businesses, in which leaders identified the business attributes necessary for survival over the next five to ten years.

Businesses must:

• Predictively spot new opportunities
• Deliver personal experiences
• Innovate in agile way
• Operate in real time
• Demonstrate transparency and trust

Goulden explained that the EMC Federation—made up of EMC Information Infrastructure, Pivotal, RSA, VCE and VMware—is in a perfect position to help deliver these five business imperatives. The Enterprise Hybrid Cloud, a foundational solution from the federation, is a key way—and it also delivers a 24% OPEX cost reduction to organizations.

Here’s where these cost savings come from.

Then, it was on to the big announcements. First up: VCE® VxRack™ System—the industry’s first hyper-converged rackscale systems for large enterprises and service providers. It’s an engineered system like a VBLOCK with the simplicity of an appliance environment.

VxRack joins Vblock and VSPEX Blue in the EMC converged infrastructure family.

Goulden also shared news for VMAX 3, including:

• FAST.X tiers data across EMC and 3rd-party vendors for storage, backup, and the cloud
• 40% lower storage costs and unlimited capacity with CloudArray
• XtremIO X-Brick options as data reduction tier

There’s also a full spectrum of Data Protection news this week, including the launch of Data Domain DD9500, which resets the bar for data protection with 1.5x the performance and 4x the scalability of the nearest competitor.

That was just the beginning; there’s more ahead. For big picture insight about yesterday’s EMC Core Technologies announcements, see the recent Reflections post from Guy Churchward, president, EMC Core Technologies Division, Transforming Your Business Shouldn’t Have to Be Death-Defying.

Partners, to get more details about these products and real-time updates from Global Partner Summit, download the new EMC Partner News App—available for both iPhone and Android. The first step once you download? Customize your newsfeed by region, technology focus, and your role.