HP To Acquire Persist To Beef Up Its ILM Offering

Hewlett-Packard executives on Tuesday unveiled a definitive agreement to acquire Persist Technologies, a provider of software for long-term storage and access of reference information.

HP executives said the acquisition is aimed at improving the company's ability to deliver information life-cycle management (ILM) solutions. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The news was announced in relation to the unveiling of 40 new products as part of HP's adaptive enterprise strategy.

Persist's active archiving software is aimed at helping customers comply with data retention regulations and gaining value from archived information. It allows the archiving of e-mails and other types of data.

Persist takes HP to the next level in terms of archiving data, said Nora Denzel, senior vice president for HP's Adaptive Enterprise and Software Global Business Unit. "It makes sure the right data is kept for the right time for regulatory purposes," she said.

Denzel said her company plans to keep all of Persist's engineers when the acquisition closes as expected by the end of the year.

"We did thorough due diligence on this and feel we can integrate [Persist] quickly," Denzel said. "They have a shipping product. The company should be integrated in the first or second quarter next year."

The acquisition of Persist comes on the heels of EMC's acquisition in June of Legato, which gave EMC e-mail archiving capabilities, and last month's announcement of a planned acquisition of Documentum, which is expected to bring enterprise content management capabilities.

Other storage vendors have recently unveiled partnerships in this space as well. In the past few weeks, both Hitachi Data Systems and StorageTek signed agreements with IXOS Software to integrate that vendor's e-mail archiving technology into their offerings.

Denzel said the Persist acquisition is part of HP's ILM strategy and not a reaction to such recent moves by other vendors.

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