Data protection and cloud services provider Symantec, filling out its cloud and collaboration software portfolio, revealed Jan. 16 that it has acquired longtime partner LiveOffice, a provider of cloud-based archiving services.
Financial details of the transaction were not released, but Jefferies & Company equity analyst Aaron Schwartz said in a media advisory that he estimated the deal cost Symantec about $115 million. Schwartz also projected that privately held LiveOffice's 2011 revenue was in the $40 million range.
LiveOffice, founded in 1998, provides hosted archiving services to about 20,000 customers. Email archiving is a large part of LiveOffice's business, but the company has expanded to include other content types -- including documents and unstructured data, such as social media content.
Torrance, Calif.-based LiveOffice in late 2009 began offering archiving support for a number of Web-based email services, including Microsoft Exchange Online, Google Apps, Cisco's new WebEx Mail and Intermedia, along with several others.
LiveOffice uses its homegrown SaaS-based CloudMerge platform to integrate these email services with its archiving. Archiving systems can be deployed for either cloud or on-site email systems and can be done in short order, CEO Nick Mehta told eWEEK.
"As far as we know, we're the first archive provider to support both cloud-based and on-premises email," Mehta said at the time.
LiveOffice's cloud offerings will complement Symantec's backup, archiving and e-discovery capabilities. Symantec has said it plans to continue development of more cloud-based applications as time goes on.
"Symantec will more deeply integrate its backup, archiving (Enterprise Vault) and eDiscovery (Clearwell) solutions with LiveOffice to provide a full portfolio of storage and information management solutions as an on-premise or cloud-based offering," Schwartz wrote in his advisory. "Without full ownership, and the ability to fully integrate the solutions, there has likely been a limitation of data flow between the various storage applications and locations."
To read the original eWeek article, click here:
Symantec Acquires LiveOffice for Cloud-Based Archiving
