Paul Maritz sells startup to EMC

PAUL MARITZ is off to work for EMC after storagezilla, as others on this title might call it, said it was buying webware startup Pi.

The former Microsoft operating systems henchman founded Pi in 2003 with the idea of creating a company that will make “products that will allow users to create, repurpose, store, share and access personal information in novel ways, taking advantage of the ubiquity of computing power and a new interconnected world”.

In other words, it will tap the Real Soon Now world of broadband everywhere for PIM-type activities. That stance is at variance to the position of Maritz’s former employer Microsoft, which remains largely wedded to the local hard drive and seems to regard supports of cloud computing as a little, well, fluffy.

From the off, Pi was conceived of as a company that would tap engineers from all over the world with a particular emphasis on India, and a presence in Canada. Martiz himself was born in the former Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, but had a stellar career in Redmond, heading up some of Microsoft’s biggest franchises.

Pi will become part of EMC, one of the smartest acquirers of technology firms in recent years. Once seen as purely a maker of storage tin, EMC has built out an interesting software arsenal through such captures as Documentum, Legato Systems, and of course, the mighty VMware.

Maritz will run a new unit at EMC, devoted to cloud computing. µ