Digital buys Compaq’s Archive

BANGALORE: Digital GlobalSoft Limited has acquired Compaq’s electronic

archive product for $ 2.5 million. The acquisition includes Compaq’s

infrastructure across geographical locations, 150,000 clients across the globe

and employees from the sales and support departments. Compaq’s Global director

for Compaq Archive, Homer Peck Kehler, has also come into Digital GlobalSoft as

the head of the Archive business group.

On the acquisition, Digital’s president and CEO, Som Mittal, said,

"The acquisition of Compaq Archive by Digital is part of its initiative of

expanding into newer areas of products and solutions around them. We have

extended our presence in the product space in line with our strategy. We are

focussed at offering product-linked services through our acquisition of

IPs."

The product under Digital’s banner will be repositioned and rechristined,

according to Mittal. He added, "It is not region specific or market

specific and is also platform independent. It is not a `killer app’ but needed

by all the companies, as archiving critical data has become essential. Compaq

was not able to concentrate on software products and building on them, and didn’t

have a strong consulting background in software and services segment. That’s

where we fit the bill and the product complimented our services. So we acquired

the product."

Apart from churning out $ five million in revenue, the company brings in all

the services contract to Digital. It is slowly to be moved from Compaq to

Digital and further clients will be serviced by Digital. However, Compaq will

continue to sell the product and its services to its customers for Digital.

Kehler said, "Archiving is not a mere back up. It is not a copy of data.

It is a collection of critical data contained in a jukebox and enabled to be

retrieved whenever needed. Compaq archives addresses of information lifecycle

management from a number of applications such as SAP R/3, where it is fully

certified, Microsoft Exchange, Lotus Domino and Documentum.

Digital has also committed itself to invest in the product creating

solutions, enhance the existing product, provide application connectors required

by its customers and increase engineering efforts to speed up new releases.