Proofpoint Picks Up Fortiva for Email Archiving

SaaS specialist Proofpoint snapped up archiving vendor Fortiva today in an attempt to plug a gap in its managed email strategy.

We had not entered the email archiving space until this time,” explained Andrew Lochart, the Proofpoint vice president of product marketing. “A number of our customers have asked us about that - this year feels like a bit of a tipping point for businesses to get serious about email archiving.”

Proofpoint would not reveal the value of today’s deal, although, with only 45 employees and around 200 customers, Fortiva was likely much smaller than recent acquisitions in this space, such as Dell’s $155 million purchase of MessageOne.

The Proofpoint VP of marketing explained that Fortiva will be offered as a module as part of the Proofpoint on Demand SaaS offering, which also includes modules such as anti-spam, antivirus and data leak protection.

Specifically, Fortiva’s flagship Archiving Suite will be rebranded as Proofpoint Email Archiving, and Fortiva will become a business unit with Proofpoint.“We’re going to be retaining the key [Fortiva] management and staff,” said Lochart. “Our main focus is around the technical areas – engineering, QA, and support.”

The exec would not reveal specific details of who is coming over, although he confirmed that Eric Goodwin, the Fortiva CEO, will not be joining Proofpoint. “I think he’s going to move to his next opportunity,” he said.

Proofpoint competes with the likes of IronPort and Postini, which was acquired by Google for $625 million, but will nonetheless ease the concerns of Fortiva’s customers, which include JP Morgan Chase, Raymond James Financial, and Danish shipping giant Maersk.

In a message posted on the Proofpoint Website this morning, the vendor’s CEO Gary Steele promises to maintain the same levels of support for Fortiva customers. “Proofpoint is dedicated to a smooth integration, handled with the utmost care,” he said. “I wanted to personally introduce you to Proofpoint and assure you of our continuing commitment to the Fortiva product.”

Proofpoint’s acquisition of Fortiva actually closed on Friday, though the vendor has not yet revealed when the two companies will be fully integrated.Recent events such as the fallout from the sub-prime mortgage scandal have focused attention on email management, with the SaaS space, in particular, becoming something of an arms race.

Search giant Google, for example, recently added flesh to the bones of its own SaaS effort with the launch of online archiving for hosted email. Last week Autonomy also ramped up its own strategy, announcing an end-to-end hosted e-discovery solution

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