HOPKINTON, Mass., Sept. 1 /PRNewswire/ -- EMC Corporation , the world leader in information infrastructure solutions, today announced it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire privately-held Kazeon Systems, Inc .-- a leading eDiscovery software provider for corporations, legal service providers, government entities and law firms. The transaction is expected to close in Q3 2009, subject to customary closing conditions and is not expected to have a material impact to revenue or EPS for the full 2009 fiscal year.
With Kazeon, EMC will be able to offer end-to-end, in-house eDiscovery and litigation readiness solutions as part of the EMC SourceOne family for integrated but modular eDiscovery, archiving and compliance. Kazeon allows organizations to quickly and reliably identify, preserve, collect, process, analyze and review information in accordance with the widely accepted EDRM (Electronic Discovery Reference Model) framework. Core to Kazeon is its ability to handle Electronically Stored Information (ESI) that resides anywhere in the enterprise environment -- including content on laptops, desktops, content management repositories (including, EMC Documentum), Microsoft SharePoint and Exchange, Lotus Domino, email archives and file shares.
The Kazeon offering is available as an appliance, enabling organizations to quickly deploy the solution. This enables Early Case Assessment (ECA) to determine case merit and legal strategies, possibly avoiding costly legal fees. Kazeon's targeted collection capabilities ensure avoidance of the classic problem of over-collection which often leads to high retention and review costs. In addition, Kazeon's legal hold management capability ensures no erroneous deletion of data and its metadata. Further, the Kazeon solution is capable of performing fine-grained analytics, including concept-based search and analysis, and offering a collaborative review platform for distributed reviewers.
Kazeon enables organizations to take a proactive approach to eDiscovery. The same solution that enables end-to-end, in-house eDiscovery can also be leveraged for the policy management of information that resides in multiple disparate systems across the enterprise. Kazeon is unique in its ability to identify and classify information and take appropriate action, such as preservation, deletion or migration of documents into EMC storage for litigation hold, and EMC Documentum for records management.
The acquisition will further strengthen the power of EMC's SourceOne portfolio. EMC SourceOne is an integrated family of products and solutions for eDiscovery, archiving and compliance. Unlike other offerings, SourceOne offers solutions that solve particular customer challenges today, and -- in conjunction with the Data Loss Prevention capabilities offered by RSA, EMC's security division -- EMC can now offer customers an industry-leading set of capabilities for discovering, classifying and managing information, enabling a full information governance strategy for the future. Each of the SourceOne offerings stands alone, but also integrates in a modular way with each other to provide a comprehensive solution. SourceOne leverages EMC tiered storage and archive infrastructures.
"As legal, regulatory, and governance requirements continue to become more stringent and expensive, it is now mandatory for customers to have a solid in-house strategy for information governance and eDiscovery," said Andrew Cohen, Vice President and General Manager of EMC's eDiscovery Business. "It no longer makes sense to collect an over-sized set of content by reactively gathering physical media, such as hard drives and backup tapes. Organizations can save significant money by intelligently indexing and finding just the relevant information, and then collecting it in forensically sound and secure ways, all in-house. Kazeon, as part of the EMC SourceOne suite will solve customer challenges across the Electronic Discovery Reference Model (EDRM). With the addition of Kazeon to the EMC SourceOne family, we will be able to offer our customers tremendous functionality, saving them money, reducing risk, avoiding unnecessary legal fines and enabling them to deploy a true information governance and eDiscovery strategy."
"At Kazeon, we're committed to providing customers with the most accurate, scalable and legally defensible eDiscovery solutions," said Sudhakar Muddu, Founder and CEO, Kazeon. "Customers across the globe are performing accurate and efficient eDiscovery, realizing dramatic cost savings and risk reduction by leveraging our broad range of solutions. Becoming part of EMC is the right strategic move for us - giving us the resources of a world-class leader in information management to effectively take our market vision to the next level. We are excited about this acquisition."
Upon completion of the acquisition, Kazeon will become a part of EMC's Content Management and Archiving Division.
About Kazeon Systems, Inc.
Kazeon is a leading eDiscovery solution provider for corporations' legal and IT staff, legal service providers and law firms. The company's independently validated solution provides the most accurate, scalable, legally defensible and court-proven eDiscovery to perform both in-place as well as target Analysis and Review, Collection and Culling, and Legal Hold for Electronically Stored Information (ESI) across the enterprise. The solution performs Early Case Assessments and fine-grained eDiscovery across multiple ESI sources such as email servers, file shares, archives, content repositories, laptops/desktops and remote offices. Kazeon has been lauded by various analysts and industry forums, including Gartner's eDiscovery MarketScope where Kazeon was rated "Positive" two years in a row across all eDiscovery categories and the Socha-Gelbmann eDiscovery Survey 2008 where Kazeon was recognized as a Top 5 eDiscovery software provider. For more information, visit http://www.kazeon.com/ or call 877-KAZEON1.
About EMC
EMC Corporation is the world's leading developer and provider of information infrastructure technology and solutions that enable organizations of all sizes to transform the way they compete and create value from their information. Information about EMC's products and services can be found at http://www.emc.com/.
EMC and Documentum are registered trademarks of EMC Corporation. RSA is a registered trademark of RSA Security Inc. All other product and company names herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.
This release contains "forward-looking statements" as defined under the Federal Securities Laws. Actual results could differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements as a result of certain risk factors, including but not limited to: (i) adverse changes in general economic or market conditions; (ii) delays or reductions in information technology spending; (iii) our ability to protect our proprietary technology; (iv) risks associated with managing the growth of our business, including risks associated with acquisitions and investments and the challenges and costs of integration, restructuring and achieving anticipated synergies; (v) fluctuations in VMware, Inc.'s operating results and risks associated with trading of VMware stock; (vi) competitive factors, including but not limited to pricing pressures and new product introductions; (vii) the relative and varying rates of product price and component cost declines and the volume and mixture of product and services revenues; (viii) component and product quality and availability; (ix) the transition to new products, the uncertainty of customer acceptance of new product offerings and rapid technological and market change; (x) insufficient, excess or obsolete inventory; (xi) war or acts of terrorism; (xii) the ability to attract and retain highly qualified employees; (xiii) fluctuating currency exchange rates; (xiv) litigation that we may be involved in; and (xv) other one-time events and other important factors disclosed previously and from time to time in EMC's filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. EMC disclaims any obligation to update any such forward-looking statements after the date of this release.
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