October 13, 2010, 4:16 PM — IBM on Wednesday announced it has acquired PSS Systems, a privately held company whose software is designed to help large organizations manage electronic documents required to meet legal obligations.
Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. PSS Systems was founded in 2004 and is based in Mountain View, Calif.
The acquisition adds more products to IBM's growing portfolio of information management software. Last month Big Blue announced it would purchase OpenPages, a risk management and corporate compliance software vendor.
PSS Systems says its Atlas Suite provides "integrated software solutions for legal holds, discovery workflow, regulatory compliance and data governance," while reducing data storage costs.
Large organizations are increasingly turning to sophisticated software that streamlines information governance and retention by enforcing policies. In addition to managing needed electronic documents, PSS Systems says its software helps avoid the retention of unnecessary information, which can increase costs and hamper an organization's ability to respond to legal requests.
IBM says it intends to combine PSS software with its own Information Lifecycle Governance software.
"With the acquisition of PSS Systems, we are able to expand our portfolio with a broader set of legal solutions that for the first time link corporate legal hold policies to the reality of how information is managed and disposed of," Ron Ercanbrack, vice president of enterprise content management at IBM, said in a statement.
Among PSS Systems customers are Abbott, BASF, BP, ConocoPhillips, Devon Energy, First Data, General Electric and Pfizer.
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