EMC's Decho Offers Online Personal Information Management

EMC on Monday launched an online personal information management service called Decho, which is offering EMC's Mozy backup service as its first product.

Decho comprises Mozy and PI, which EMC acquired in October 2007 and February 2008, respectively. Mozy provides online backup to 900,000 people and more than 25,000 businesses. PI, however, has yet to launch a product but is focused on developing online services for managing people's digital content, such as financial records, personal documents, family photos, and video scattered across different computers, digital devices and Web sites.

PI was founded by Paul Maritz, who was named chief executive of VMware this year. EMC acquired VMware in 2004.

While Mozy is Decho's only product, the company plans to launch other services. "There is an immense, untapped business opportunity as personal information management inevitably migrates into the cloud," David Goulden, EMC executive VP and CFO said in a statement.

EMC didn't release a timetable for future Decho services, and didn't release the names of the management team. The new company has operation centers in Bangalore, Montreal, and Utah, and is headquartered in Seattle, according to EMC.

Decho, which stands for "digital echo," is entering a crowded market of Internet companies offering one form or another of personal information management. Plaxo, for example, offers a popular service for contact management. Its rival Del.icio.us was acquired by Yahoo in 2005. There are many other sites for storing and sharing photos, such as Flickr and Picasa, owned by Yahoo and Google, respectively; and for creating and sharing documents, such as Google Docs and Zoho.