Former Softie Maritz to head cloud computing at EMC

Former Microsoft Platforms chief Paul Maritz may be best remembered for his alleged threat to "cut off Netscape's air supply." (For the record, Maritz has denied he ever said those exact words.)

As Seattle Times blogger Brier Dudley notes, Maritz sold his personal-information-management startup, Pi, to EMC on February 21. As part of the transaction, Pi becomes an indepenent subsidiary of EMC, and Maritz becomes general manager of EMC's cloud computing division, reporting directly to EMC CEO Joe Tucci.

According to today's EMC press release:

"Maritz will continue to directly oversee development and operations for Pi, along with other key elements of EMC’s cloud computing strategy, which include the EMC Fortress SaaS (Software as a Service) infrastructure, the Mozy online backup service and other upcoming EMC cloud infrastructure systems and software offerings under development."

Microsoft has revealed bits and pieces about its own cloud-computing strategy, which is spearheaded by Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie. The coming battle in the clouds should be interesting....

(Meanwhile, for those for whom "Paul Maritz" isn't a familiar name, here's his bio from the Pi site:

"Paul spent 14 years working at Microsoft from 1986 to 2000. During that period he managed the development and marketing of System Software Products (including Windows 95, Windows NT, and Windows 2000), Development Tools (Visual Studio) and Databases Products (SQL Server), and the complete Office and Exchange Product Lines. At Microsoft, Paul served as a member of the Executive Committee that managed the overall company. Prior to joining Microsoft, Paul spent 5 years working at Intel Corporation. ")