HP Monday announced it has signed an agreement to acquire for an undisclosed sum Tower Software, an Australian maker of document and records management software.

The proposed acquisition will enable HP to expand its e-discovery, records and compliance management products and begin to collect content stored in Microsoft SharePoint to better address corporate governance and regulatory compliance, HP says. Tower, founded in 1985, is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner and its TRIM Context document and records management software includes business rules to help customers achieve compliance.

HP intends to expand an existing integration between TRIM Context and its Integrated Archive Platform to offer customers products that can distinguish electronic business records in resumes, quotes, e-mail and office documents from general business communications. Going forward, HP says the products would be integrated to "provide customers with a combined records management and compliance archiving solution." (Compare message archiving products.)  

"Electronic records management has moved from a back-office task to a business-critical function," said Robin Purohit, vice president and general manager of Information Management Software at HP, in a company statement. "The combination of the HP and Tower software portfolios is expected to be hugely beneficial to the legal and IT organizations of businesses."

Tower, headquartered in Canberra, Australia, has some 1,000 customers in the government, energy, utilities and pharmaceutical industries across 32 countries. President and CEO Martin Harwood said in an HP press release that broadening the partnership with HP and combining technologies will enable Tower to expand its reach into enterprise accounts.

"The combination of HP and Tower will allow us to scale and provide our customers with a comprehensive portfolio of enterprise information and IT management software solutions," Harwood said.

The board of directors at Tower unanimously approved the transaction and recommends that Tower shareholders accept HP's offer in the absence of a higher third-party offer. The acquisition will be conducted "by means of an off-market takeover bid for all of the outstanding sharers of Tower," according to HP.