Reuters Global Innovation Summit

Symantec will buy privately held database specialist Clearwell Systems for $390 million, as the world's number five software maker shores up its storage and cloud computing capability.

The agreement to buy Clearwell

The agreement to buy Clearwell, which helps governments and corporations archive, analyse and process data, came afterwards CEO Enrique Salem told the Reuters Global Innovation Summit he will pursue a number of smaller, "tuck-in" acquisitions to boost its research portfolio.

Cloud computing refers to using offsite computers to store and manage data and access applications. Clearwell's expertise is in "electronic discovery" or the categorising and processing of data, a market Gartner estimates at $1.7 billion by 2014.