Symantec announced on Monday that it has acquired LiveOffice, a provider of cloud-based email archiving, email compliance, email discovery and email continuity solutions, for approximately $115 million.
Symantec says the acquisition will extend its information governance offerings to the cloud and provide customers a choice between on-premise, cloud or hybrid delivery of Symantec solutions.
Founded in 1998, Torrance, California-based LiveOffice serves more than 20,000 companies.
Through existing integrations between LiveOffice and its Clearwell eDiscovery Platform, which was acquired by Symantec in a deal announced in May 2011, customers are able to export information from LiveOffice to the Clearwell eDiscovery Platform for processing, analysis, early case assessment and review. The acquisition of LiveOffice will continue to enable Symantec to provide customers deeper alignment between the archiving and eDiscovery software solutions, the company says.
According to Gartner, the eDiscovery software market is growing at a compounded annual growth rate of 14 percent and is estimated to reach $1.7 billion by 2014.
This acquisition also brings an opportunity for tighter integration between archiving and Symantec.cloud’s email security and management capabilities. With LiveOffice, Symantec provides customers a complete cloud-based solution for messaging protection, including: anti-SPAM, security, continuity, archiving, compliance, and eDiscovery. With LiveOffice’s cloud-based archiving, customers can confidently address the challenges of messaging protection for both on-premise and hosted email. With no hardware or software required, this solution frees up IT resources and provides users with rapid and secure access to email from their inbox, any supported web browser or hand held device.
LiveOffice CEO Nick Mehta spent more than five years at Symantec and Veritas Software (acquired by Symantec in 2005), where he served as vice president and general manager of the Enterprise Vault information archiving and discovery software business. Mehta also led product management for all email-related businesses at Symantec.
