Image by Patrick H~
IBM on Wednesday acquired information management company StoredIQ Inc., adding data management and reduction technology to Big Blue's e-discovery and storage product lines.
StoredIQ formed in 2001 and quickly gained customers and partners. Litigation support staff and data storage managers use its software to reduce overlapping and irrelevant data. IBM rivals EMC Corp., Hitachi Data Systems Corp., and Symantec Corp. are among StoredIQ's technology partners — all allow their data archiving products to be managed through various StoredIQ products — although they are less likely to encourage their customers to use StoredIQ products due to the current deal, IBM vice president of information lifecyle governance Deidre Paknad acknowledged.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed, nor did officials state whether the full team from StoredIQ will join IBM. StoredIQ officials could not be reached Wednesday.
Paknad said her company had its eye on StoredIQ. "There wasn't an effort to go find things that would work better," she said. "What you have in an opportunity to do post-acquisition is much more user experience, integration, and seamlessness, that you might not do when you're partners."
That will happen quickly, Paknad said. "We are very, very focused on speed. You can expect us to work in parallel … for both the legal buyer and the IT buyer in our combined offerings. Those buyers have one thing in common, which is the volume of data drives their cost and drives their risk." IBM and StoredIQ will begin presenting their product roadmaps at the LegalTech New York trade show in January 2013, with presences in each other's booths, Paknad added.
IBM will continue to invest in companies that focus on helping customers grasp their data volume, Paknad said.
"Seems like probably good timing for both companies," Enterprise Strategy Group vice president Brian Babineau observed. "StoredIQ's been in this business for a long time," but needed the strength of a company like IBM to grow, he said.
"The most logical connection is making sure that you can pass information between the PSS Systems portfolio and Stored IQ," Babineau continued. (PSS Systems is a maker of e-discovery software that IBM acquired in 2010, bringing Paknad into the fold.) "The second place would be making sure that StoredIQ can support IBM's repositories including FileNet," which is content management software IBM acquired in 2006.
Evan Koblentz is a reporter for Law Technology News. Send email or follow him on Twitter.
