Computer Associates International continued to stockpile its storage
software portfolio, adding e-mail archiving specialist iLumin Software
Services for an undisclosed sum.
CA will tuck iLumin’s Assentor line, which helps customers address records
management, discovery, litigation support and compliance for e-mail and
instant messages on platforms, such as Microsoft Exchange, Lotus Domino and
Novell GroupWise. CA will retain the majority of iLumin’s 100+ employees, as
well as iLumin’s Reston, Va., headquarters.
Anders Lofgren, senior vice president of BrightStor storage management at
CA, said in an interview the move was CA’s next step in its strategy for
building out intelligent storage management.
Adding software that saves and secures e-mails in an iron-clad fashion will
plug a hole in CA’s plans for solutions that satisfy federal compliance
regulations, Lofgren said.
Rules such as Sarbanes-Oxley, SEC 17a-4 and HIPAA require that e-mail and
other digitally created files be saved for a specific length of time.
Moreover, government rules often forbid corporations from making changes to
such files in case they need to be pulled for legal purposes. This means the
stored files have to be stowed away in a database, disk or tape with digital
locks or encryption.
That’s where iLumin’s software comes in.
Lofgren said CA chose iLumin for its complete breadth of products and its
solid customer base, noting that four out of the top five banks in the U.S.
use Assentor products today.
“We see there is some great compatibilities to do some integration work
between the Assentor line and our other BrightStor products,” Lofgren said.
Mike Gundling, senior vice president of product management at iLumin, said
the deal gives iLumin the muscle and resources to compete in a market marked by consolidation.
For sure, CA’s move on iLumin isn’t a new trend, but a continuation of an
essential one for vendors serious about providing information
lifecycle management offerings for customers whose data is precious.
One can argue EMC kicked off the trend in 2003 by purchasing Legato Software and running it as a subsidiary. Legato’s Disk Extender
(DX) and Email Extender (EX) proved to be big sellers in EMC’s software
division.
But there was a whole lot of consolidation going on after that, even if 2005
has been relatively quiet in this space.
In 2004, Veritas, since absorbed by Symantec, acquired
e-mail archivist KVS for $225 million.
Startup Zantaz snapped up litigation support services provider Steelpoint Technologies and on-site e-mail archiving and management provider Educomm.
Thanks to this trend,
there is serious money to made in e-mail archiving, according to
Gartner.
The research firm said the worldwide e-mail archiving market for licensed
products is expected to see a 58 percent compound annual growth rate over the
next five years, growing from $89 million in 2004 to $883 in 2009.
CA will demonstrate the new e-mail messaging products, along with BrightStor
data availability and storage management suites, at CA World 2005 in Las
Vegas beginning Nov. 13.
