Microsoft announced today that it has acquired Equivio, a company that makes data analytics software for e-discovery and information governance. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
The company’s tools allow governments, corporations and other large organizations to sift through massive troves of data for the purposes of responding to legal or compliance matters. Equivio’s products allow companies to pick data out of a pile of information so that they can more easily handle those requests.
“Equivio’s solution applies machine learning to help solve these problems, enabling users to explore large, unstructured sets of data and quickly find what is relevant,” Rajesh Jha, Microsoft’s Corporate Vice President for Outlook and Office 365, said in a blog post announcing the deal. “It uses advanced text analytics to perform multi-dimensional analyses of data collections, intelligently sorting documents into themes, grouping near-duplicates, isolating unique data, and helping users quickly identify the documents they need. As part of this process, users train the system to identify documents relevant to a particular subject, such as a legal case or investigation.”
Its technology will be integrated into other Microsoft products. Most notably, it will enhance Office 365’s existing suite of e-discovery tools.
Microsoft said that it expects “a significant number” of Equivio’s current employees to join the company as a part of the acquisition. They’ll be working out of the company’s offices in Israel, including the Microsoft Israel Research and Development Center.
The company will fulfill existing commitments with Equivio’s customers and partners, though Microsoft said that Equivio will not be selling its Equivio Zoom product to new customers now that the acquisition has closed.
