EMC Expands GRC Portfolio by Acquiring Archer Technologies

EMC Corp. is purchasing governance, risk and compliance (GRC) software firm Archer Technologies. Archer will remain in its Kansas headquarters after the acquisition and become part of EMC’s RSA security division.

Through this purchase, EMC hopes to help its customers better visualize and manage risk throughout their infrastructures, both physical and virtual. In addition to providing visibility into risk and compliance, Archer solutions also enable users to manage the lifecycle of corporate policies and objectives.

Archer's out-of-the-box solutions include Policy, Risk, Compliance, Enterprise, Incident, Vendor, Threat, Business Continuity, and Audit Management. All are built on the flexible Archer SmartSuite Framework, allowing customers to tailor the solutions according to their unique requirements and deploy them either on-premise or virtually through Archer’s SaaS model. In addition, Archer provides a user community and application and partner exchange.

Archer's technology, coupled with RSA's solutions for data loss prevention and security information and event management, will provide EMC customers with a broader set of GRC solutions, ranging from policy orchestration and security controls through real-time security event management and remediation. Archer's technology will also benefit from complementary solutions such as the EMC Ionix data center automation and virtualization tool, helping customers automate IT configuration change and compliance across physical and virtual server, network, and storage environments.

EMC, which already holds a dominant position in the information infrastructure vertical, may be able to further strengthen its standing by purchasing Archer. By offering clients built-in visibility into policy management, audit and compliance, EMC adds important elements of transparency and control to its data management capabilities. Archer also brings 6 million clients, including 25 members of the Fortune 100, to the table. While there is undoubtedly overlap, EMC still gains new direct access to enterprise clients with large volumes of data that need to be supported, stored, managed and protected.

EMC and Archer did not disclose financial details of the purchase agreement. EMC's acquisition of Archer is expected to close in Q1 2010, subject to customary closing conditions. The transaction is not expected to have a material impact to revenue or EPS for the full 2010 fiscal year.