ZANTAZ, EDUCOM Aim for Email Archiving Dominance

In a play for email archiving dominance, ZANTAZ has acquired EDUCOM TS Inc.

ZANTAZ dominates the hosted compliance and discovery space, while EDUCOM is focused on on-site email archiving and management. The combined company will be “the only single-source provider of end-to-end e-communications management solutions for compliance, electronic discovery, and email storage management,” ZANTAZ states.

With the need for email archiving and management surging as a result of laws and regulations like SEC Rules 17a-3 and 17a-4, Sarbanes-Oxley, and HIPAA, ZANTAZ officials maintain the merger makes them well positioned to benefit.

“It’s becoming a strategic issue for Fortune 1000 companies,” says ZANTAZ marketing VP Craig Olson.

And beyond compliance, email is also becoming important in legal discovery, according to David Greene, director of Financial Services Market for ZANTAZ. “Attorneys are very much aware of how important email is to corporations these days, and they’re asking for it,” Greene told Enterprise Storage
Forum.

“I have high expectations for this union,” says Enterprise Storage Group research analyst Peter Gerr. “I think it’s an important move by ZANTAZ, whom I like very much. Even though they’re small in comparison to Iron Mountain, they’re winning deals and really offering the right services at the right time.”

ZANTAZ “has built a stable business in a tough climate” by offering hosted electronic discovery and compliance support to financial services organizations and other companies “struggling to meet regulatory mandates on managing electronic messaging and communications,” Gerr told ESF.

Why Focus on Enterprise Messaging?
(Click to Enlarge)

EDUCOM is “definitely one of the top vendors to offer on-site enterprise message archiving and management solutions for Microsoft Exchange, Lotus Notes, and other environments,” Gerr continued, noting that in a recent ESG Research study of more than 220 enterprise and midrange IT users (see side graphic), 61% stated that enterprise messaging applications were their most critical data protection need.

Olson and Greene say the acquisition benefits ZANTAZ in a number of ways. ZANTAZ has a direct sales model, while EDUCOM has a global network of resellers and distributors. EDUCOM is also strong in the energy, government, and legal markets, giving ZANTAZ additional market access.

With firms in the email archiving space getting snapped up, including IXOS and Legato, Olson reports ZANTAZ evaluated KVS and EDUCOM before settling on EDUCOM as the best way to move into the on-site application space.

Greene says EDUCOM’s technology includes some unique features — such as the ability to save a single copy of an email or attachment even though there are multiple copies in the system — that ZANTAZ plans to incorporate into its hosted service. Other features include Oracle and SQL support, the ability to retain individual documents or emails, the ability to search messages and attachments by keyword, and support for zip files.

The merged company plans to offer its products to the financial, legal, healthcare, pharmaceutical, utility, manufacturing, and government sectors. ZANTAZ did not disclose terms of the deal.

Back to Enterprise Storage Forum