Zantaz Acquires E-Mail Management Vendor Educom

Closely held Zantaz acquired the Ottawa-based vendor in a cash and stock deal. Cost of the transaction was not disclosed.

Used primarily for corporate compliance and legal discovery, the Zantaz service generates e-mail streams over a VPN, indexes each document and then stores customers' e-mail in a secure off-site facility. That facility is either Zantaz's own data center near its Pleasanton, Calif., headquarters, or the Boulder, Colo., data center of Zantaz marketing partner, IBM Global Services.

Educom TS offers similar capabilities in its licensed software. Depending on the market-research firm being cited, Educom typically swaps top market-share honors with England-based KVS. IT research firm Gartner recently gave the market-lead nod to Educom, with 25 percent share of the on-site e-mail management market. Educom competitors Legato and Ixos also were acquired in the past nine months, Legato by storage leader EMC and Ixos by Open Text.

King said Educom's revenue has been growing at 100 percent each year. That fact, plus Educom's global reach and channel network, attracted Zantaz to the company.

"With Educom, 100 percent of their business is driven by the channel, while 100 percent of our business comes from direct sales. So this channel is a terrific addition to our distribution strategy," King said. "We focus exclusively in the U.S., where we have 13 of the top 20 financial services firms in the world. More than half of Educom's business is international."

Educom's customers include UBS Warburg, the European Economic Commission and the Veterans Administration. According to King, Educom's channel partners can immediately mine Zantaz's installed customer base, which typically want combinations of hosted and on-site systems to protect their e-mail systems.

"We can happily continue with two separate product lines, but we will have tighter integration between the two by the end of the year," King added. "But that will be gravy."

Andrew Moffat, founder and CEO of Educom, will join Zantaz's executive team as vice president of product strategy. King said the 45-person Educom team will remain in Ottawa.