February 10, 2010

Clients, Partners, Colleagues and Friends:

It’s been a few weeks since I’ve written, and I’d like to update you on the benefits you’ll see over the next several months, resulting from Archer’s integration into RSA, The Security Division of EMC. We’re incredibly excited to join with the EMC family to strengthen our ability to support enterprise governance, risk and compliance (GRC) programs on a global scale and to deliver greater value to you, our user community.

I’ve had conversations with many of you about what our relationship with EMC means for our customers, and I’d like to summarize some key points:

Focus on Enterprise GRC and Community-Driven Innovation
As I stated in my last message, the Archer team will remain focused on delivering enterprise GRC solutions across IT, Finance, Operations and Legal business domains. Our community-driven approach to Framework and solution innovation will be stronger than ever, and the relationships we share with our customers will not change. RSA is dedicating additional resources to add value to Archer, and they are doing so in a manner that allows our team to stay focused on meeting customer needs and continuing the evolution of our GRC platform and solutions.  

Synergies with Products Across EMC Divisions
Many of you are customers of EMC and RSA, and you will benefit from deeper integration with their products. Integration will allow you to further streamline 1) the collection of evidence for testing IT controls and 2) the handling of issues identified by products such as RSA enVision, RSA Data Loss Prevention, the RSA Identity Protection and Verification Suite, as well as products in the EMC portfolio, like the Ionix suite of IT management products and VMware.

Key integration principles will include:

• Maintaining an open architecture – The content independence and vendor neutrality of the Archer SmartSuite Framework is a key differentiator for Archer that will not change.

• Aligning alerts, reports, etc. in other RSA products with Archer controls – This will enable easier mapping of reports and alerts to the business drivers and impacts behind them.

• Providing packaged capabilities – RSA will deliver pre-built integrations with the Archer SmartSuite Framework across the RSA product line, taking advantage of Archer's open architecture.

Stay tuned to the Archer, RSA and EMC blogs over the next weeks and months for more details on product synergies and integration.

Software Development and Quality Assurance
EMC considers product quality to be of paramount importance, and future releases of the Archer SmartSuite Framework and GRC solutions will take advantage of EMC methodologies and tools regarding quality assurance in the software development lifecycle. This will result in enhanced speed to market and an improved Total Customer Experience for Archer customers.

SaaS Environment
Archer SaaS customers will be moving to a Tier-1 EMC data center in the second quarter. EMC hosted data centers are SAS 70 certified, giving you visibility into the controls in place to protect your data. Moreover, EMC hosted data centers typically maintain the highest availability, so you can be confident in our ability to meet your service-level expectations.

Customer Support and Professional Services
You will continue to receive the same exceptional service you have come to expect from Archer’s product experts, and you’ll have additional resources from RSA, EMC and our broader partner community to empower your GRC programs on a global scale. Specific to customer support, you’ll see expanded hours and international resources for your global user base.

In the area of professional services, you’ll have access to consultants from EMC and RSA with deep industry and technology expertise across business, applications and infrastructure. (For more information on EMC Consulting, I invite you to read a recent article by EMC’s Yo Delmar titled On the Road to Dynamic GRC – EMC, RSA and Archer Technologies.)

As you can see, there’s a lot to be excited about as Archer joins forces with one of the world’s largest and most innovative technology companies. For those of you who are attending the upcoming RSA Conference in San Francisco, I hope you’ll visit the Archer, RSA and EMC booths for more information. I also urge you to join us for the Archer GRC Summit in April, our annual user group gathering, where we’ll provide much more detail on how Archer, EMC and RSA have joined forces to bring together the people, processes and technologies that enable global GRC programs.

Thank you for your business and your continued support of Archer.