Enterprise storage giant EMC has acquired Pi Corp., a small technology start-up that has yet to release any products on its own. EMC did not disclose the purchase price, but did announce plans to hire Pi’s founder Paul Maritz as president of a new Cloud Infrastructure and Services division.
Maritz is a 14-year veteran of Microsoft who left the company in 2000 and went on to serve as chairman of the Grameen Foundation, the innovative nonprofit founded by Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus.
While information about Pi’s technology is limited, EMC CEO Joe Tucci offered some clues about the company’s cloud-computing plan.
Cloud computing, for those unfamiliar with the term, refers to the strategy of data and applications existing on a shared network rather than on individual users’ computers. With cloud computing, users have greater access to shared resources.
Tucci emphasized that Pi’s technology is complementary to EMC’s emerging cloud infrastructure strategy. And, he said, Maritz will provide leadership to help position EMC at the leading edge of cloud computing and personal-information management.
Maritz described his vision as “allowing consumers and corporate information workers 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.”
EMC has been focused on cloud opportunities for the past year, said analyst Charles King in a telephone interview with us earlier today.
The company “has identified the incredibly rapid growth in information acquisition and storage as a really huge challenge for individuals and enterprises,” he said. And, King added, EMC recognizes this as an opportunity to explore products and services they could offer to help.
EMC’s acquisition of Berkeley Data Systems and the release of its Mozy product was the first step, while “Pi takes this a step forward,” King said. “Pi is…