Symantec buys cloud email service LiveOffice for $115M

The new must-have acquisition is cloud technology -- especially for data and IT companies

Large tech companies have been snapping up cloud services at a rapid pace. The latest company to pull a cloud company into its acquisition catalog is the security and storage company Symantec. 

Symantec announced Monday that it bought the cloud email archiving company LiveOffice for $115 million.

LiveOffice's services in cloud email archiving also extend into on-premises archival which allows clients to migrate from their current provider to a cloud provider without losing any sensitive material in the process.

Symantec will be able to put LiveOffice's services to good use in its security and data storage service since more companies are finding that emails maintain value and are big contributors to network storage clutter.  The LiveOffice technology assures that if cloud-based hosting service experiences an outage, users are still able to send and receive messages, including attachments, from the archive while the provider is down, since everything is backed up.

LiveOffice, founded in 1998, has roughly 20,000 clients and processes millions of messages a day. 

LiveOffice's CEO, Nick Mehta, was also a former Symantec exec before launching the email cloud and security system.

Symantec Corp. ( NASDAQ: SYMC ) will use these new services to better protect client information and provide cloud or hybrid delivery of Symantec solutions.

"The governance of information is increasingly important to businesses. Companies need to simultaneously control and liberate information, letting employees freely access the information they need for maximum productivity without resulting in compliance risks to the organization," said Katey Wood, analyst, Enterprise Strategy Group, in a statement.  

Through the existing integrations between LiveOffice and its recently acquired Clearwell eDiscovery Platform, customers will be able to export information from LiveOffice to the Clearwell eDiscovery Platform where it is collected for processing, analysis, early case assessment and review. 

This latest acquisition will help Symantec to provide customers deeper alignment between these industry leading archiving and eDiscovery software solutions.

With LiveOffice, Symantec hopes to provide customers a complete cloud-based solution for messaging protection: from anti-SPAM and security to continuity and archiving. 

With LiveOffice's cloud-based archiving, customers can confidently address the challenges of messaging protection for both on-premise and hosted email. With no hardware or software required, this solution frees up IT resources and provides users with rapid and secure access to email from their inbox, any supported web browser or hand held device.

Most recently, the enterprising cloud service company, Voxel, was acquired by the IT solution company Internap, for $30 million cash earlier this month.

Voxel, founded in 1999, has provided on-demand hosting and cloud services to enterprises and Web-based businesses and touts more than 1,000 customers and near 50 employees for the New York City-based company. By bringing on the services and talent from Voxel, Internap hopes to compliment its portfolio and help provide more cloud services to its existing customers.

IT and data companies with the equity to do so, will continue to buy of cloud technology in order to provide the solutions that companies are demanding -- and for a while, cloud will be the biggest and most common demand they will be hearing.

Symantec (NASDAQ: SYMC) was trading Monday morning at around $15.88.