EMC to buy cloud computing start-up Pi

EMC on Thursday said it will acquire Pi, a cloud computing start-up founded by former Microsoft executive Paul Maritz.

Financial terms of the all-cash transaction were not disclosed.

Maritz will join the storage company as president and general manager of a newly created Cloud Infrastructure and Services division.

Privately held Pi, which has about 100 employees, is now beta-testing an online personal information management service (Pi stands for "personal information").

The software Pi is working on is designed to let people control, share, and publish information that is online or locally stored, according to the company's Web site.

EMC said that Pi will fit into the company's "cloud infrastructure" strategy. Cloud computing is the idea of building and running applications that run on the Web and are delivered as a service.

"We're saying that success in this new space will require a very different technology base--and a business model--very unlike other parts of the traditional IT landscape," wrote Chuck Hollis, EMC's global marketing chief technology officer, in his blog.