Symantec has acquired archiving company LifeOffice, in a deal worth $115 million. Symantec increases its cloud-computing power to fight the battle and be more of an on-premise and software as a service (SaaS) company. Most traditional enterprise-software companies are scooping up cloud-based companies, with SAP purchasing SuccessFactors, and Oracle taking RightNow.

Symantec said in a statement that it will use LiveOffice to bolster its information-governance unit, as LiveOffice provides a cloud-based archiving system. LiveOffice and Symantec were partners before the deal, which it has now fused into one. Symantec said in a blog post:

A major force already driving us along the information-governance path is the C word: cloud. As organisations adopt (willingly or otherwise!) hosted mail, Dropbox, Box.net, Chatter, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc, we need to retain, secure and analyse that data as well. To enable that move of enterprise data to the cloud, the archive needs to, as well ...

 

LiveOffice, with its talented team and cloud-archiving technology, will improve our ability to connect people to information, wherever it resides, for two key reasons. First, we see a tremendous opportunity to leverage the resources of Symantec to better reach, support and deliver integrated solutions to our customers. Those integrations can be not only supporting information governance as discussed here, but also providing a complete cloud mail-protection solution. Second, we have come to know the LiveOffice organisation well through our OEM relationship, and see a strong cultural fit between our teams' DNA, standard of excellence and customer focus.