Former Softie getting the old band back together?

Former Microsoft platforms chief -- who, these days, is heading up cloud computing at EMC -- might be trying to get at least some of the old Microsoft band back together again.

According to a few different sources who asked not to be named, Maritz has hired Charles Fitzgerald, Microsoft's former head of Platform Strategy, to work at Smart Desktop, a division of Martiz's Pi Corp.

Fitzgerald resigned from Microsoft in January 2008 and neither Microsoft nor Fitzgerald himself would comment on where he was going.

(I tried contacting Smart Desktop to see if Fitzgerald was hired, to no avail. I also tried e-mailing Fitzgerald, but so far, no reply.)

Maritz sold his personal-information-management startup, Pi, to EMC on February 21. As part of the transaction, Pi became an indepenent subsidiary of EMC, and Maritz became general manager of EMC’s cloud computing division, reporting directly to EMC CEO Joe Tucci.

Smart Desktop, according to its Web site, "is a pioneer in intelligent information management for the Microsoft Windows desktop. Smart Desktop's patent pending machine intelligence technology automatically organizes the resources you access by associating them with the projects, clients, or customers you work with on a daily basis."

With development headquarters in Bangalore, India, Pi is set "to deliver products that will allow users 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," according to its Web site.

Wonder if any other former Softies will resurface at Pi/EMC, going head-to-head with Microsoft....