Interesting moves this week by the Hoptown heroes (sorry, been on school vacation with the little ones). I don’t know Harry You (which invokes Abbot and Costello scenes every time I think about it; You? Who? What? Huh?), but read the book on him. EVP, Office of the Chairman, reporting to Mr. T.

"You will focus on helping accelerate EMC’s key growth and efficiency initiatives leveraging his deep background in IT services, finance and investment banking."

With some desperately needed grown-up time, I can come up with all sorts of meaning to that line.

1. You is going to hang out under Joe and learn the whole business, potentially setting himself up as an heir apparent.
2. You is going to hang out under Joe and learn the whole business, focusing mostly on VMware, and eventually take that over.
3. You is going to figure out how to spin out VMware entirely, and take EMC private.
4. You is going to end up as COO, and become one of many as possible heirs.
5. You is going to end up as CFO (and possibly COO), and Dave Goulden becomes heir apparent.
6. You is hanging out with Joe to shake up the existing brain trust, and Joe isn’t telling anyone what, why, or when just yet.

I can pretty much guarantee 6. I also think 1-3 are entirely possible (unless I meet Mr. You and find him a drooling buffoon, but that’s unlikely). Of course, I could be reading much too much into all of this, but it beats arguing over Chuck E. Cheese versus McDonalds.

This morning EMC announced they acquired Pi, who I don’t know either, but find a few things interesting. First, the Pi founder, Paul Maritz, was made the head of EMC’s "Cloud Infrastructure and Services Division" – which is a way cool name if nothing else. That puts him on top of Mozy and some other interesting things soon to be coming out that have pretty big ramifications, so I have to assume that this guy is a player (the odds of Joe T. bringing in multiple drooling buffoons at the very same time can’t be that good, unless he has completely lost his mind but in that case I would have expected a release that read more like "EMC acquires Honey Bucket, Inc., Seattle’s largest porta-potty player. Frank Stink to head new ‘Things that look like Porta-Potty’s’ Division, which includes Symmetrix, Cellera, and Centerra lines.").

Second, is that Pi was a startup based on personal information management – which means either Tucci really wanted Maritz and didn’t care if he was working at a car wash, or he really wanted into the PIM space. Being both a search fanatic and a conspiracy theorist, I could spend hours on this one.

Related posts:

1. Dave Donatelli Leaves EMC for HP