PORTLAND, Ore. and SANTA CLARA, Calif., Nov. 3, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Smarsh, enabling organizations to manage the risk and uncover the value within their electronic communications, announced today that it will acquire the Digital Safe archiving and risk management portfolio from Micro Focus following required customary regulatory approvals, expected in the first calendar quarter of 2022.

The addition of the Digital Safe customer base, technology and team of subject-matter experts strengthens Smarsh's position in Enterprise Information Archiving and accelerates execution of its global growth strategy.

"Solving the sophisticated archiving, compliance and e-discovery needs of the largest regulated multi-national companies requires scale, flexibility and support infrastructure," said Brian Cramer, Smarsh CEO. "This acquisition partners two experienced leaders, both with a proven track record of supporting our respective customers."

With its portfolio of market-leading capture and archiving technology, powered by artificial intelligence and deployable on the world's leading cloud infrastructure providers, Smarsh is well-positioned to meet the sophisticated and evolving archiving, compliance and e-discovery needs of the largest regulated multi-national organizations. It currently serves over 6500 customers, including many of the largest global and American investment and commercial banks.

"We're excited to welcome Digital Safe archiving customers and employees to the Smarsh family," added Cramer. "Existing mutual customers will benefit from this union through greater continuity in their communications infrastructure and communications data strategy. This acquisition also enables Smarsh to better serve our cross-border financial services customers and to expand our footprint in other heavily regulated industries."

With today's hybrid workforce, the volume and variety of electronic communications that regulated organizations need to retain and monitor is growing at an unprecedented rate. Workstream collaboration platforms, like Microsoft Teams and Zoom, are critical for the hybrid office, but they create multi-modal communications data (chat, voice, etc.) that must be captured, retained and supervised for regulatory compliance.

Meanwhile, international regulators are leveraging artificial intelligence in the oversight and examination of member firms, and are keenly tuned to gaps in records retention and supervision. The SEC collected a record $4.7 billion in fines in 2020, and FINRA enforcement cases increased across the board.¹International data privacy and data residency requirements are also becoming more complex, with new guidelines being implemented in many parts of the world. As a result, firms are seeking greater deployment flexibility in order to satisfy those jurisdictional requirements.

"This is a strong, strategic move that enables greater global innovation and growth for both Digital Safe and the Smarsh customer base," said Scott Richards, Senior VP and GM of Information Management and Governance at Micro Focus. "Smarsh has built its growth and reputation through electronic communications archiving and compliance, with continued innovation in artificial intelligence and cloud deployability. This focus will serve Digital Safe customers well, who will be able to leverage Smarsh capture capabilities on day one to deliver new content sources to their existing Digital Safe environments."

The Digital Safe business includes the Digital Safe product and the complementary offerings of Social Media Governance, Supervisor and eDiscovery.

"Smarsh and Micro Focus each have a powerful heritage in the archiving space, with significant combined experience in archiving for compliance," said Stephen Marsh, Smarsh Founder and Chairman. "Having an experienced partner and the right strategy to implement to support the retention and oversight of electronic communications has never been more critical. Data volume is growing by orders of magnitude. New communications channels are being used for business every day and legacy archiving technology is challenged by the volume and complexity. Regulatory scrutiny is evolving. The status quo is not a strategy. This challenge is not going away and solving it will grow more difficult, expensive and invite more risk with every day that passes."

Smarsh manages billions of messages monthly across email, social media, mobile/text messaging, instant messaging and collaboration, web, and voice channels. The company has expertise in serving global financial institutions and US-based wealth management firms across both the broker-dealer and registered investment adviser (RIA) segments.

¹ https://www.smarsh.com/blog/thought-leadership/enforcement-2020-highlights-from-regulatory-year-like-no-other/

About Smarsh:

Smarsh is a recognized global leader in electronic communications archiving solutions for regulated organizations. It provides innovative capture, archiving, e-discovery, and supervision solutions across the industry's widest breadth of communication channels.

Scalable for organizations of all sizes, the Smarsh platform provides customers with compliance built on confidence. It enables them to strategically future-proof as new communication channels are adopted, and to realize more insight and value from the data in their archive. Customers strengthen their compliance and e-discovery initiatives, and benefit from the productive use of email, social media, mobile/text messaging, instant messaging and collaboration, web, and voice channels.

Smarsh serves a global client base that spans the top banks in North America and Europe, along with leading brokerage firms, insurers, and registered investment advisors. Smarsh also enables federal and state government agencies to meet their public records and e-discovery requirements. For more information, visit www.smarsh.com.

About Micro Focus:

Micro Focus ((LSE: MCRO, NYSE:MFGP) is a global enterprise software company supporting the technology needs and challenges of the Global 2000. Our solutions help organizations leverage existing IT investments, enterprise applications and emerging technologies to address complex, rapidly evolving business requirements while protecting corporate information at all times. Our product portfolios are Security, IT Operations Management, Application Delivery Management, Information Management & Governance and Application Modernization & Connectivity. For more information, visit: www.microfocus.com.

Media Contacts

Robert Chilver

Walker Sands

312 546 4712

Robert.chilver@walkersands.com

Ken Anderson

Smarsh

503 946 6044

ken.anderson@smarsh.com

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Smarsh Acquires Digital Safe Product Line from Micro Focus