EMC moves on data management, security

There was a time when EMC was considered a rather staid tech company in a boring, if profitable market: storage. No longer. With regulations bearing down on enterprises, EMC is now a major player in areas such as security and content management.

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That change was evident last week, as EMC wrapped up its massive, $2.1 billion acquisition of RSA and announced that it was buying yet another security company: Network Intelligence, for $175 million.

Network Intelligence produces enVision, a data management product that aggregates information such as log files, applications, hosts, and network devices. The company and its products will be added to EMC’s new security division, which will be located at RSA’s campus in Bedford, Mass.

RSA’s identity management, access management, and data encryption products will be the heart of EMC’s “information-centric security strategy,” CEO Joe Tucci said in a statement. Network Intelligence’s wares will allow EMC to offer customers compliance and security policy management tools as part of that strategy.

EMC also showed some progress in integrating past acquisitions. Infoscape, unveiled on Monday, is a data storage management product that ties together technology from EMC’s purchase of Documentum and Legato in 2003, as well as Smarts in 2005.

The product works with EMC’s Celerra storage environment and DART OS and allows customers to organize unstructured documents such as spreadsheets, presentations, and word processing files.