EMC has signed an agreement to purchase electronic-discovery software firm Kazeon Systems. The deal is expected to close this autumn, and EMC said that the acquisition will allow it to improve discovery and document retrieval for its customers.

The company will deliver a hardware appliance that can handle any electronically stored information held in an enterprise, including data on laptops, within content management systems systems, and on other applications like Microsoft SharePoint, Exchange and Lotus Domino.

"As legal, regulatory and governance requirements continue to become more stringent and expensive, it is now mandatory for customers to have a solid in-house strategy for information governance and e-discovery," said Andrew Cohen, vice president and general manager of EMC's e-discovery business.

"It no longer makes sense to collect an over-sized set of content by reactively gathering physical media, such as hard drives and backup tapes. Organisations can save significant money by intelligently indexing and finding just the relevant information, and then collecting it in forensically sound and secure ways, all in-house."

The appliance will add to EMC's SourceOne family of discovery, archival and compliance tools, and is pitched firmly in the direction of IT teams and legal departments.

As well as helping firms stay on top of their data, the device will also help to better manage storage resources, and "ensure avoidance of the classic problem of over-collection which often leads to high retention and review costs", according to the firm.

"Customers across the globe are performing accurate and efficient e-discovery, realising dramatic cost savings and risk reduction by leveraging our broad range of solutions," said Sudhakar Muddu, founder and chief executive at Kazeon.

"Becoming part of EMC is the right strategic move, giving us the resources of a world-class leader in information management to effectively take our market vision to the next level. We are excited about this acquisition."