EMC to acquire Kazeon Systems

EMC has signed a definitive agreement to acquire privately held Kazeon Systems, an e-discovery 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 on revenue or EPS for the full 2009 fiscal year.

With Kazeon, EMC will be able to offer end-to-end, in-house e-discovery and litigation readiness solutions as part of the EMC SourceOne family for integrated but modular e-discovery, archiving and compliance. Kazeon allows organizations to identify, preserve, collect, process, analyze and review information in accordance with the widely accepted Electronic Discovery Reference Model (EDRM) 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, e-mail 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.