EMC's acquisition of Kazeon
September 4, 2009
By Richard Ross

EMC's acquisition of Kazeon now enables EMC to provide a true end-to-end eDiscovery and information management platform. EMC is now poised to become the number one player in the market; the closest competitor that we can think of is Autonomy. Where does that leave some eDiscovery applications and tools? Some prominent examples are Clearwell Systems and StoredIQ. It is expected that EMC will be eliminating Clearwell Systems and StoredIQ from their partner program.

We believe EMC and Kazeon can provide complete proactive eDiscovery capabilities for corporations, something others in the market are unable to provide (e.g., Clearwell). What the market needs is a strong platform that can scale and provide enterprise-wide capabilities and not point solutions that don't scale or integrate well. We see EMC and Autonomy going head-to-head pretty strongly and leaving the others in the dust. The emergence of strong platforms such as EMC/Kazeon's also raises the standard in the market and leaves the competition working feverishly to catch up. Overall, this is a great acquisition; EMC seems very committed to the space, and we expect the Kazeon innovation to continue and be complemented by EMC's famous marketing and sales engines!

Desperate people will say and do desperate things, as evidenced in Clearwell System's latest blog posting. They are clearly worried about Kazeon's success; the future will be much clearer in the coming months.

See related article:
http://blogs.barrons.com/techtraderdaily/2009/09/02/update-emc-paying-150m-for-kazeon/