Category Archives: Information Management

GIC, Information Management, John Gannon, M&A, Michael A. Brown, News & Analysis, Symantec, The Carlyle Group, Vendor, Veritas

Symantec to sell IM business Vertias for $8.9bn

Symantec is selling its IM business to an investor consoritum

Symantec is selling its IM business to an investor consoritum and refocusing on security

Digital security heavyweight Symantec announced this week it would sell its information management business, Veritas, to a group led by The Carlyle Group together with GIC, Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund, for a total of $8.3bn.

The move confirms Symantec will continue to focus on security following the announcement last October that the company would split in two, with its IM business and security business going separate ways.

“Since the Board first announced the separation of Veritas, we have been preparing the company to operate independently and evolving our business strategy, while continuing to deliver industry-leading solutions to our customers. We are thrilled to partner with The Carlyle Group and GIC, which have a strong track record of successfully growing businesses and share our dedication to Veritas’ strategy and success,” said John Gannon, Symantec executive vice president and Veritas general manager.

“Veritas will continue to provide next-generation information management solutions to serve the world’s largest and most complex environments, including multiple cloud deployments, managed services and on-premise infrastructure,” Gannon said.

Symantec expects to receive $6.3bn in cash for Veritas, and has authorized a $1.5bn increase to its existing share repurchase program, bringing the total to $2.6 billion, yielding a total of $8.9bn from the sale. Veritas was originally acquired by Symantec for $13.5bn in 2005.

Michael A. Brown, Symantec president and chief executive said: “This transaction strengthens our financial foundation, paving the way for Symantec to grow its security business and increase its lead as the world’s largest cybersecurity company. We believe the agreement with the investors, including The Carlyle Group and GIC, delivers an attractive and certain value for the Veritas business, and is in the best interests of all stakeholders.”

The divestment isn’t terribly surprising giving Symantec’s messaging at the tail end of last year. Upon announcing the company would split Brown said its security and IM businesses each face unique market opportunities and challenges.

“It has become clear that winning in both security and information management requires distinct strategies, focused investments and go-to market innovation,” he said at the time.

Now it seems Symentec is refocusing exclusively on security, and said the sale would give it a much needed cash influx to help it fund both organic and inorganic growth through targeted acquisitions.

AvePoint, Collaboration, compliance, Information Management, Microsoft SharePoint, SharePoint

AvePoint DocAve Update Adds SharePoint Governance Automation Features

AvePoint, announced the latest version of DocAve Governance Automation Service Pack (SP) 2. DocAve Governance Automation SP2 allows business content owners to make content move or copy requests directly within SharePoint or through a newly enhanced graphical user interface that promotes a more intuitive, user-friendly experience.

Governance Automation enables organizations to close the custom code gap created by homegrown governance solutions, by providing Service Catalog Offerings such as site collection provisioning, site provisioning, site collection lifecycle management, permissions management, and now, content move or copy requests.

Through an automated approval process and execution, business content owners can now request to move, copy, and restructure SharePoint sites, content, and topology within or across SharePoint environments while maintaining valuable metadata, security and versioning.

“An organization’s SharePoint environment is only as good as its ability to govern the users and content it supports. Governance Automation SP2 provides unique business advantages that redefine SharePoint as a service, allowing organizations the ability to more effectively deliver business-critical workloads and truly monitor and track what is being done in SharePoint on a daily basis,” said George Petrou, Chief Technology Officer at AvePoint. “Governance Automation is another piece to help solve the enterprise collaboration puzzle, providing organizations with the information management solutions to meet their needs now and in the future.”

Governance Automation SP2 addresses evolving information governance policies and organizational change management by enabling end users to submit content move or copy requests through an enhanced user interface or directly within Microsoft SharePoint via a webpart, giving business users the ability to submit requests on their own, increasing ease of use and productivity.

Enhanced features include:

  • Content Move or Copy Service Request: Within a single request and through a fully auditable approval process, business content owners have the ability to comprehensively move, copy and restructure SharePoint sites, content, and topology, along with their corresponding security settings and metadata, across SharePoint farms. Governance Automation also provides developers the ability to request sample production data for in development or testing environments for increased application reliability and improved quality assurance. Requests are then automatically executed by Governance Automation, optimizing operational efficiency and proactively protecting against compliance infractions, thereby enabling your IT resources to perform higher business value activities while ensuring content is only changed by those with the proper permissions to do so.
  • Newly designed graphical user interface (GUI): Designed to mirror SharePoint 2013 and Microsoft Windows 8 style, the newly designed GUI provides users with a simple but contemporary workspace that is effective either as a standalone tool or as a webpart in SharePoint.  Governance Automation’s new GUI was designed for improved usability and intuitive user interaction in order to promote end user adoption and resolve ambiguity around requesting services from IT administrators.

DocAve Governance Automation SP2 is generally available today, March 5, 2013. For more information visit AvePoint’s website.

Big Data, eDiscovery, Electronic discovery, Information Management, Retention period, Unstructured data

DataIQ Aims for Big Data Visualization Simplicity at Low Cost

Image representing StoredIQ as depicted in Cru...

StoredIQ today announced DataIQ, designed to give organizations a simple, low-cost, visualization solution to understand their unstructured data — without first moving it to a repository — to help answer data intelligence questions that challenge many of today’s IT organizations such as:

“Every company has more data than it can manage. But few can precisely locate it, assess the value of it, or make much sense out of it when they need to,” said Ted Friedman, vice president and distinguished analyst with Gartner. “Information management projects can be very intimidating. To set a course for success, organizations need to build insight regarding the whereabouts, meaning, and usage of their data.”

Designed to run on the StoredIQ Platform, DataIQ scales from terabytes to petabytes, from single corporate offices to global enterprises, and provides a single, holistic view across a multitude of enterprise data sources and hundreds of file types — without moving any data from its native location. With DataIQ, organizations have the power to make informed decisions before starting any information management initiative including: data migration, storage optimization, records management, eDiscovery, data clean up, and information governance. DataIQ gives companies the ability to:

  • Identify – interesting subsets of information without moving
    any data across the corporate network
  • Analyze – data using advanced visualizations to spot compliance
    violations, get out in front of the eDiscovery process, make
    infrastructure planning decisions, jump start records initiatives, etc.
  • Act – copy, collect, and move data that requires further
    processing or retention; defensibly delete data that provides negative
    value to the company

“As we worked with customers on information management initiatives from eDiscovery, information governance, storage, and records retention, one common theme bubbled up over and over…customers needed a simple tool to give them a comprehensive understanding of their unstructured data,” said Phil Myers, CEO of StoredIQ. “DataIQ was designed as a quick start data intelligence application that empowers customers with knowledge about their data to better plan and prepare for any information management project.”


Electronic discovery, Information Management, Legal, Legal Hold Pro, Partnerships, Zapproved

Nuix Launches Legal Hold Solution with Technology Partner Zapproved

Image representing Zapproved as depicted in Cr...

Nuix, a worldwide provider of information management technologies, and Zapproved Inc., developers of Legal Hold Pro, today announced a technology partnership to introduce Nuix Legal Hold. Nuix Legal Hold is a cloud-based legal hold notification and compliance tracking system that works with Nuix collection and eDiscovery solutions. Nuix Legal Hold is built on Legal Hold Pro, which has been enthusiastically embraced by Fortune 500 companies and government agencies because it is the fastest and simplest way to manage the legal hold notification and compliance process.

Nuix Legal Hold provides legal teams the ability to manage the electronic discovery process. The system streamlines the overall process of responding to anticipated litigation and satisfies the duty to preserve relevant information in a defensible, repeatable manner. With Nuix Legal Hold, legal teams now have a fully integrated electronic discovery solution that systematically tracks, notifies and analyzes data from custodians subject to litigation holds.

“Zapproved has developed an effective and efficient system for managing litigation holds and the preservation workflow, and we’re very excited to work together to offer Nuix Legal Hold as a valuable service for our customers,” said Nuix CEO, Eddie Sheehy.

“Nuix and Zapproved are both committed to introducing powerful solutions into the legal market that our users find simple and easy to use,” said Monica Enand, CEO and founder of Zapproved. “This partnership integrates two state-of-the-art solutions that empower organizations to take on managing eDiscovery in-house.”

Nuix Legal Hold is available now and will be showcased at LegalTech West Coast May 22–23 at Booth 312. For more information on Nuix Legal Hold visit www.nuix.com/legalhold.