Autonomy today announced that it has acquired CA's (formerly Computer Associates) Information Governance assets.  These consist primarily of two main products, CA Records Manager and CA Message Manager.

It's a surprising acquisition from two angles, first that CA should have seen so little value in this division to dump it, and secondly that Autonomy, already something of a holding firm with overlapping products, should feel the need to buy still more overlapping technologies.

That being said CA had two decent products, that essentially provided a two-level approach to compliance. (We evaluate them both in our ECM research.) The first, a general and very practical, bucket-style approach to retention, that could have the second (Records Manager) added to it for those with a need for more granularity.  However, both were acquisitions by CA. Records Manager was from the MDY acquisition in 2005 and had previously been called "FileSurf." The second, Message Manager, was from a firm called iLumin that was also acquired in 2005, and at the time was a market leader in e-mail management. 

Neither acquisitions really settled at CA, and never really found themselves a part of CA -- itself a huge and at times difficult organization.  At first glance it seems CA did not really appreciate what they had, or the strategic value it could provide to their overall data management practice. 

Autonomy, though, already has records management systems (from Meridio and Interwoven) along with archiving from the Zantaz acquisition.  Why they should need more I don't know.  The only thing that is clear from today's announcement is that Autonomy has further confirmed the general impression that they are a holding company. Undoubtedly Autonomy will soon announce that the CA products have been integrated via "The IDOL Platform", but we would strongly advise buyers to take time to see how this really works itself out -- as well as the long-term costs.