EMC Corp, the world’s biggest maker of corporate storage computing gear, said on Thursday it was hiring former Microsoft Corp executive Paul Maritz to run a division to develop services delivered over the Web.
EMC also said it will buy Pi Corp, a privately held start-up founded by Maritz. It did not disclose the purchase price.
Maritz will be president and general manager of EMC’s new Cloud Infrastructure and Services Division. The unit will focus on «cloud computing,» a term that describes services accessed over the Web that seem to exist in a cloud of the Internet.
Internet companies including Google Inc and Yahoo Inc are pioneers in the field, with products accessed via the Web. Retailer Amazon.com sells computer storage and access to virtual computer servers.
Pi does not yet have any products on the market. It is developing technology that will allow businesses and consumers to control who has access to information stored in cloud computing centers.
Web cloud computing could help improve healthcare, for example, by holding detailed electronic medical records, said Carl Howe, a Yankee Group analyst that EMC briefed on its strategy. Patients must be made confident their confidential information will be secure, he said.
«It’s really about consumers controlling their information,» said Howe.
EMC’s Web-delivered offerings will compete with those from large technology companies including International Business Machines Corp. and Symantec Corp, the world’s biggest security software maker.
The EMC division will develop new products and oversee the company’s existing Mozy online storage business.
Mozy, which EMC bought last year, sells software that backs up business computers and PCs, then stores the information at remote data centers that customers access via the Internet.
Prior to founding Pi, Maritz spent 14 years working at Microsoft where he had broad development and marketing responsibilities and was a member of its Executive Committee that ran the company.
Fuente: Reuters
