CA Storage Gains Records Management With MDY Buy

CA will be able to more fully flesh out the information management piece of its storage business with the acquisition of records management software and services vendor MDY Group International, announced Tuesday.

MDY’s FileSurf software automates the management of customers’ physical, electronic and e-mail records, and is designed to make it easier for them to comply with regulatory requirements and internal policies around data storage.

“Records management is a very critical component of what we’re doing in the storage business,” Bob Davis, senior vice president and general manager of CA’s storage business unit, said. CA didn’t disclose the financial details of the MDY purchase.

CA has three main components to its storage operations, Davis said: recovery, resources and information management.

CA’s recovery management offering is mainly ARCserve Backup software. CA offers resources management, where data is classified into different types and then managed, through its BrightStor HSM software, a rebranding of CaminoSoft’s Managed Server HSM for Windows product. CA kick started its presence in the information management space with its acquisition of e-mail management and archiving company iLumin in October.

As CA has been selling the iLumin software, which it has rebadged as Message Manager, customers have been asking for records management, an area the company had already earmarked as technology it needed to offer. CA and MDY had been talking for “the better part of a year,” Davis said, culminating in the acquisition. “This is not the beginning of the story. We’ve already talked strategy. This is in the middle; now we’re bringing it together to provide overall federated records management,” he added.

CA will market and support all MDY products and services and integrate the company’s technology with Message Manager. Davis sees plenty of other areas where CA and its partners could integrate MDY’s records management capabilities, particularly around recovery management and identity and asset management software.

MDY had also been approached by other storage technology vendors and by enterprise content management players looking to acquire the company, according to Galina Datskovsky, founder and former chief executive officer of MDY.

The firm chose to go with CA primarily because the companies shared a similar vision on the storage market and there was synergy between both staff, she said. All 70 of MDY’s employees have joined CA with Datskovsky becoming senior vice president of development in CA’s storage business unit.

Founded in 1988, MDY has its headquarters in Fair Lawn, N.J. The company’s name is derived from the initials of its founders, Datskovsky said.

-China Martens, IDG News Service (Boston Bureau)

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