Storage giant EMC announced yesterday that they will acquire privately-held Kazeon.  Interesting articles on the acquisition were provided by eWeek’s Chris Preimesberger, CMS Wire’s Irina Guseva and InformationWeek’s Andrew Conry-Murray, as well as in the blogosphere.  All contained roughly the same themes which can be summarized as follows:

• Most thought longtime-EMC partner Stored IQ (in whom EMC had actually invested) would be the “acquiree” instead of Kazeon
• The perceived losers in the deal were the other tactical eDiscovery solutions being resold by EMC alongside Kazeon, i.e. Stored IQ and Clearwell
• In addition to price, Kazeon’s expertise and technology related to enterprise search was a key component of the deal

To varying degrees, all three points have merit and are probably true to some extent.  But in the grand scheme of things, EMC paying $75 million (or $150 million) for anything is not a big deal; thus, focusing solely on who “won” or “lost” in a single transaction risks missing the bigger picture as to exactly what is going on here, and what EMC – as just one player, albeit a large player – is signaling by making this move.  Here are the real takeaways from our perspective:

• EMC recognized that eDiscovery is a strategic play, not a tactical one, which is why they want to own technology in order to incorporate it into their products and extend its capabilities to meet their needs, perhaps someday even making it a true end-to-end solution (which it most definitely is not today)
• As EMC’s President of CMA is quoted as saying, search is a critical component of eDiscovery.  eDiscovery vendors without their own search technology and expertise will be hard pressed to market and sell a truly strategic eDiscovery offering.  Not coincidentally, 3 of the 6 “Leaders” in Gartner’s just-announced Magic Quadrant for Information Access Technology (including Recommind), representing the most widely deployed and respected search technology in the world, are eDiscovery-focused vendors.  Stay tuned for more on this…
•  The real action is yet to come.  EMC believes they acquired some decent, extensible technology on the cheap.  What will the other big players in the storage/archiving and content management space do next?  Oracle, IBM, Symantec, NetApp and HP – you are now on the clock

The action doesn’t really get started before the first player throws down the gauntlet, which may or may not have just happened with EMC’s move.  One thing is certain, however: eDiscovery finally seems to be getting the recognition it deserves amongst the bigger fish in the pond.