Smarsh acquires Digital Safe product line from Micro Focus
Smarsh has announced plans to acquire the Digital Safe archiving and risk management portfolio from Micro Focus following required customary regulatory approvals. The transaction is expected to close in the first calendar quarter of 2022.
Smarsh is a provider of electronic communications archiving solutions for regulated organizations, delivering capture, archiving, e-discovery, and supervision solutions. Smarsh manages billions of messages monthly across email, social media, mobile/text messaging, instant messaging and collaboration, web, and voice channels. The company has expertise in serving global financial institutions and U.S.-based wealth management firms across both the broker-dealer and registered investment adviser (RIA) segments.
Smarsh says the addition of the Digital Safe customer base, technology, and team of subject-matter experts will further stengthen its position in enterprise information archiving and accelerate the execution of its global growth strategy.
“Solving the sophisticated archiving, compliance, and e-discovery needs of the largest regulated multi-national companies requires scale, flexibility and support infrastructure,” said Brian Cramer, Smarsh CEO. “This acquisition partners two experienced leaders, both with a proven track record of supporting our respective customers.”
“We’re excited to welcome Digital Safe archiving customers and employees to the Smarsh family,” added Cramer. “Existing mutual customers will benefit from this union through greater continuity in their communications infrastructure and communications data strategy. This acquisition also enables Smarsh to better serve our cross-border financial services customers and to expand our footprint in other heavily regulated industries.”
According to Smarsh, with today’s hybrid workforce, the volume and variety of electronic communications that regulated organizations need to retain and monitor is growing at an unprecedented rate. Workstream collaboration platforms, such as Microsoft Teams and Zoom, are critical for the hybrid office, but they also can create multi-modal communications data (chat, voice, etc.) that must be captured, retained, and supervised for regulatory compliance.
At the same time, international regulators are leveraging AI in the oversight and examination of member firms, and are keenly tuned to gaps in records retention and supervision. According to Smarsh, the SEC collected a record $4.7 billion in fines in 2020, and FINRA enforcement cases increased across the board. International data privacy and data residency requirements are also becoming more complex, with new guidelines being implemented in many parts of the world. As a result, Smarsh says, firms are seeking greater deployment flexibility in order to satisfy those jurisdictional requirements.
The Digital Safe business includes the Digital Safe product and the complementary offerings of Social Media Governance, Supervisor, and eDiscovery.
“Smarsh and Micro Focus each have a powerful heritage in the archiving space, with significant combined experience in archiving for compliance,” said Stephen Marsh, Smarsh founder and chairman. “Having an experienced partner and the right strategy to implement to support the retention and oversight of electronic communications has never been more critical. Data volume is growing by orders of magnitude. New communications channels are being used for business every day and legacy archiving technology is challenged by the volume and complexity. Regulatory scrutiny is evolving. The status quo is not a strategy. This challenge is not going away and solving it will grow more difficult, expensive and invite more risk with every day that passes.”
More information is available from www.microfocus.com and www.smarsh.com.