EMC restructures to capture digital echoes in ‘the cloud’

18 Nov 2008

Storage technology giant EMC has merged two formerly separate businesses to create Decho Corporation, a new company focused on helping people manage their personal information in the internet cloud.

Decho will be a combination of two formerly separate EMC businesses – Mozy Inc and Pi Corp. Decho will continue to offer consumers and businesses the Mozy-branded online backup service, as well as introduce new cloud-based services for individuals over time.

The personal information once stored in albums, boxes and filing cabinets—such as financial records, personal documents, family photos and videos, portfolios of professional work and correspondence—comprises each person’s digital echo. This information is increasingly scattered across different computers, digital devices and websites.

According to EMC, the quantity of personal digital information produced every year around the world is now measured in the hundreds of billions of gigabytes, and is expected to continue to grow annually by almost 60pc, according to analysts.

It said the lifespan of this information is beginning to be measured in decades, and it is ever more valuable and often irreplaceable.

EMC has warned that the shift of personal information from physical to digital has not yet been accompanied by a parallel shift in the way this information is organised and preserved in digital form.

Decho will help individuals take full control of their digital echo through a set of cloud-based services that will enable easy and full utilisation, organisation and enrichment of important personal information.

“There is an immense, untapped business opportunity as personal information management inevitably migrates into the cloud,” said David Goulden, EMC executive vice-president and chief financial officer.

“By bringing Mozy and Pi together to form Decho as a new subsidiary, 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.”

Decho’s initial service offering is the Mozy online backup service for both consumers and businesses.

With over 900,000 users and over 25,000 business customers, Mozy safeguards over 10 petabytes (over 10 million gigabytes) of customer information at its data centres around the world.

Mozy online backup is a comprehensive online backup solution for simple, automatic and secure online backup for both consumers and businesses, with support for laptops, desktops and servers running either Mac OS X or Windows.

By John Kennedy

John Kennedy is a journalist who served as editor of Silicon Republic for 17 years

editorial@siliconrepublic.com