Nemertes Impact Analysis:

EMC (NYSE:EMC) is expanding its governance risk and compliance (GRC) portfolio with the acquisition of privately held Archer Technologies. Archer’s SmartSuite Framework automates the assessment, planning and management of risk and compliance. SmartSuite augments RSA’s – EMC’s security division –data loss prevention (DLP) and e-Discovery products.

GRC is a natural extension of enterprise content management (ECM) such as EMC’s Documentum. The governance aspect of GRC relies heavily on documentation, workflow and the ability for the right person to produce the right content or artifact at the right time, especially during an audit. EMC follows IBM (NYSE:IBM), Oracle (NASDAQ:ORCL) Stellent and privately held OpenPages in the merging of ECM and GRC.

Impacts:

Enterprises: Demand close coupling between GRC and ECM to facilitate efficient and effective governance.

Vendors: Opportunity for competing ECM vendors Autonomy (Interwoven) (LSE:AU) and Open Text (NASDAQ:OTEX) to tightly integrate GRC with ECM.

Investors: GRC acquisition targets include: privately held Aline, Axentis, Bwise, Methodware, Modulo and QUMAS.

By Ted Ritter, Senior Research Analyst

Sign Up To Receive Nemertes Impact Analysis By E-mail

Follow Nemertes Research on Twitter