Autonomy to buy CA's Information Governance division

Autonomy has announced plans to acquire the Information Governance division of CA Technologies later this year.

The deal will include the purchase of assets such as CA Records Manager, described as a "market leader in federated and physical records management", and CA Message Manager, which allows messages to be captured and managed according to corporate and regulatory requirements.

As part of the acquisition, CA Information Governance employees will join Autonomy to continue providing "sales, support and products to existing and new customers", according to a statement.

CA's Leanne Agurkis said the division is being sold because "it is not part of our core strategy", and that the firm wants to focus on other areas, including access management, cloud computing, security and mainframes.

Clive Longbottom, service director at Quocirca, argued that CA is not seen as a heavy player at a pure governance level, and that the move makes sense for two reasons.

"Autonomy gets more for its pure-play information management and governance approach. CA gets more money to invest in changing its focus from a product portfolio seller to a cloud solutions player," he said.

Jon Collins, managing director and chief executive at Freeform Dynamics, suggested that CA has decided it is unable to compete in this area and has divested itself of the product line. However, he is still puzzled by CA's strategic goals.

"While CA may have decided that it does not have sufficient reach into the legal and regulatory market for records management and archiving, it would be a huge mistake to turn its back on the broader aspects of information governance, " he said.

It is understood that the acquisition will go through in the third quarter of 2010. The value of the deal remains undisclosed at this time.