EMC creates cloudy backup firm

EMC has announced the creation of a new company called Decho today, designed to capitalise on the trend towards cloud computing.

It said it was merging two online storage subsidiaries, Pi Corporation and Mozy, to focus on "helping people protect and manage the ever-growing quantity of personal digital information in their lives." EMC dubbed all this information a persons digital echo.

The new company will continue to offer consumers and businesses online storage and backup in the cloud,' as EMC has done with the Mozy brand it acquired in October 2007. But it said Decho would also introduce new cloud-based services for individuals over time.

With analysts claiming that the quantity of personal digital information produced every year is expected to continue to grow by almost 60 per cent every year, David Goulden, EMC executive vice president and chief financial officer said this presented a great opportunity to push cloud-based personal information management services.

"We are creating a focused organisation that can deliver on the promise of cloud-based personal information management and can help individuals everywhere preserve, manage and enrich the information most important to them," Goulden said.

EMC claimed Decho would be the first cloud-based firm to reflect the shift from physical to digital in creating and storing of personal information. And the services under development will build on the existing Mozy online backup service by helping users access and organise their information more effectively.

With over 900,000 users and over 25,000 business customers, EMC said Mozy already safeguards over 10 petabytes of customer information in its data centres around the world, supporting systems running either Mac OS X or Windows.

EMC will no doubt be looking to exploit the cloud-based management capability acquired with the personal information management firm, Pi in February this year. Pi was founded by former Microsoft executive and recently appointed VMware chief, Paul Maritz, as part of his position as EMC's head of cloud computing.