Everyone’s seen the news by now. We are being acquired by a leader in Information Management, EMC Corporation. This is great news for us and EMC, and we are all excited about the transaction! Clearly, EMC+Kazeon are poised to emerge as leaders in the eDiscovery and broader Information Management market, leaving point applications and tools in the dust (we all know who they are). Autonomy is the closest competitor we can think of.

Some desperate players are making desperate comments, as expected. An example is Clearwell who is clearly worried not only about their relationship with EMC but also about their general growth in this space. They are a small application, and they should be worried. Similarly, others like StoredIQ and Recommind should worry too – not only because of this transaction but simply because all these vendors address only small areas of eDiscovery (think 1 or 2 boxes within the EDRM framework) with an application/tool approach. Not one of them can boast of an end-to-end functionality with a scalable & fast platform approach. But enough about the also-rans.

What does the future hold for corporations, law firms and service providers in terms of eDiscovery? They will be well served with a proper in-house eDiscovery and broader Information Management and Governance strategy. They can choose a solid platform, from a company that knows how to serve their customers well, and from a company that possesses the entire stack within their portfolio. That option is available here and now.