Autonomy Acquires Zantaz

$375 million will buy a lot of things, and one of them appears to be Zantaz, “a global leader in content archiving, electronic discovery solutions and software as a service.”  Autonomy, “a global leader in infrastructure software for the enterprise,” is behind the purchase.

I know those are two pretty stiff quotes with which to begin an article – sorry for that, but it’s often useful to see how companies view themselves.  As for how we view them, Autonomy’s relationship with Blinkx might be the best-known aspect of either business’s operations.

Yet those operations are quite big; the Times Online’s Rhys Blakely reports, “The news sent shares in Autonomy sharply higher, up 14 per cent at 829p, valuing the company at about £1.7 billion” (or about $3.4 billion).

It turns out that Zantaz is quite powerful, as well; although the corporation doesn’t even have its own Wikipedia entry, a press release reveals, “ZANTAZ customers include 9 of the top 10 global law firms, 11 of the Fortune 25 and 14 of the top 20 financial securities firms.”  Impressive.

That explains the lofty language used by both companies, then, and also the fairly large price for Zantaz.  And it seems that Autonomy is going to sit back and take a breather when this is all over.  “After the acquisition Autonomy will have about $75 million in cash left on its books, but it has said that it is not on the lookout for other acquisitions,” writes Blakely.