{"id":894,"date":"2007-07-23T17:38:26","date_gmt":"2007-07-23T23:38:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.redmonk.com\/cote\/2007\/07\/23\/hp-acquisition-day-opsware-and-neoware-and-the-larger-issue-of-hp-it-management-offerings\/"},"modified":"2007-07-23T17:38:26","modified_gmt":"2007-07-23T23:38:26","slug":"hp-acquisition-day-opsware-and-neoware-and-the-larger-issue-of-hp-it-management-offerings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/cote\/2007\/07\/23\/hp-acquisition-day-opsware-and-neoware-and-the-larger-issue-of-hp-it-management-offerings\/","title":{"rendered":"HP Acquisition Day: Opsware and Neoware &#8211; And the Larger Issue of HP IT Management Offerings"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>Four years ago we spent 70% of our R&amp;D dollars on hardware, but last year that 70% was dedicated to software. &#8212;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.networkworld.com\/news\/2007\/061907-hurd-hp.html\">Mark Hurd, CEO, HP<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>HP is on the path to acquiring two more companies today: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.infoworld.com\/article\/07\/07\/23\/HP-to-acquire-Opsware_1.html\">Opsware<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.infoworld.com\/article\/07\/07\/23\/HP-to-buy-Neoware_1.html\">Neoware<\/a>. I don&#8217;t have a well reasoned analysis at the moment for you, but here are some off-the-cuff thoughts:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>If Opsware&#8217;s Run Book Automation (not just monitoring, but actually <i>doing stuff<\/i> with IT) works as well as Opsware&#8217;s recent growth and The Hype would seem to indicate, strapping together HP&#8217;s existing IT management assets along with Opsware under the OpenView brand would be might powerful marketing. OpenView is still a good <i>brand<\/i> name, though, perhaps, an aged technology. Using Opsware and other recent acquisitions to pull a product line refresh, a la BMC PATROL-to-BMC Performance Manager could be both technologically and market wise successful. We&#8217;ll see.<\/li>\n<li>Us IT Management wonks are always talking about how HP is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theregister.co.uk\/2007\/06\/28\/hp_ibm_marketing_king\/\">getting serious<\/a> about software, that is, <i>IT management<\/i> software. Software has always been the odd man out at HP, but obviously HP is spending to change that: Mercury, today&#8217;s two, and others.<\/li>\n<li>The M&amp;A speculation fun-hogs among us like to throw in pereinial favorite BMC, but there are other, sort of &#8220;second tier&#8221; IT management companies as well.<\/li>\n<li>Virtualization &#8211; HP has done work to create The Problem of Virtualization (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.infoworld.com\/article\/07\/06\/16\/Virtual-computing-can-be-a-real-hassle_1.html\">&#8220;like bacteria in a petri dish&#8221;<\/a>), perhaps this is now The Solution that you, with The Problem, can buy.<\/li>\n<li>Not knowing Neoware well at all, the first thing I think of is comparing Microsoft Softricity&#8217;s &#8220;application virtualization&#8221; to it. Sure, it&#8217;s not the <i>same<\/i> technologically (from what I know of Neoware), but the end result could be the same&#8230;?<\/li>\n<li>I hadn&#8217;t thought about it &#8217;till know, but the question of SunRays comes up here as well. The problem there was (the perception) of having to buy Sun hardware, but it seems like if the &#8220;application virtualization&#8221; idea takes off, Sun could profit from some after-glow marketing quite well if phrased right.<\/li>\n<li>Special mention goes to the city Neoware is based in: &#8220;King of Prussia.&#8221; Whao!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>The Wider Angle<\/h2>\n<p>The big picture here is HP building up a complete, refreshed IT management product line. Clearly, HP is going for the Big 4 dream of providing an ITIL implementation, which is fine and good, really. Until a black swan comes along and changes the agenda from ITIL, I&#8217;m sure there&#8217;ll be plenty of market for that message.<\/p>\n<h2>Missing<\/h2>\n<p>There are some missing items from what I know of HP&#8217;s IT management strategy, however:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Open source &#8211; I&#8217;m not sure if HP&#8217;s feelings about open source in IT management are out in the open yet. Several months ago, <a href=\"http:\/\/redmonk.com\/sogrady\/2007\/03\/28\/hp-tsg-analyst-summit-the-sound-of-silence\/\">at an HP event, Steve said<\/a>:<br \/>\n<blockquote><p>\nNowhere, interestingly, as one of the Forrester analysts and I discussed earlier today, did they utter the words &#8220;open source.&#8221; Not once that I caught. Nor, as you might deduce from that omission, the word &#8220;developer.&#8221;\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>(Form HP software exec, Nora Denzel&#8217;s interviews <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/news\/newsfeeds\/articles\/newstex\/IBD-0001-17805732.htm\">with <i>Investor Business Daily<\/i><\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/weblog.infoworld.com\/openresource\/archives\/2007\/01\/on_open_source.html\">Dave Rosenberg<\/a> are interesting, tangential background data-points.)<\/li>\n<li>SaaS &#8211; both when it comes to providing IT management as a service (a la FiveRuns, Klir, Service-now.com, and friends), but, more importantly, providing the tools for managing SaaS installs (the latest addition here being <a href=\"http:\/\/evapt.com\/\">eVapt<\/a> with others skirting around that I need to look more into). I had a brief moment of excitement when I read Opsware as Op<i>source<\/i>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The open source hole looms larger in my mind than the SaaS one. While I think providing IT management as a service is something that the Big 4 will be slow to reap the benefits of (based on my past experience at BMC and on my current read of the Big 4&#8217;s SaaS ambitions), providing IT management for SaaS is more of a medium- to long-term bet that the Big 4 could, if they found themselves in a sudden pinch of successful companies, acquire to fill out the bullet point.<\/p>\n<p>Open source in IT management, on the other hand, is looking to be a Big Deal in the next year or so. Figuring out how to incorporate open source into an existing, closed source company without getting revenue jitters isn&#8217;t as easy as acquiring a bullet point: it&#8217;s wider, deeper change that requires planning and, more importantly, time for successful culture change.<\/p>\n<p>So, the afore mentioned &#8220;IT wonks&#8221; will no doubt be watching HP more. We&#8217;ll be seeing what OpenView 2.0, so to speak, looks like.<\/p>\n<p>I like <a href=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~r\/typepad\/the_ponderings_of_woodrow\/~3\/136641769\/hp-finds-a-few-.html\">Jason&#8217;s good round-up<\/a> as well.\n<\/p>\n<p><b>Disclaimer:<\/b> FiveRuns, Sun, and fellow Big 4 members BMC, CA, and IBM are clients. I&#8217;m friends with one of the founders of eVapt.<\/p>\n<p><!-- technorati tags start --><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align:right;font-size:10px\">Technorati Tags: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.technorati.com\/tag\/hp\" rel=\"tag\">hp<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.technorati.com\/tag\/itmanagement\" rel=\"tag\">itmanagement<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.technorati.com\/tag\/m&amp;a\" rel=\"tag\">m&amp;a<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.technorati.com\/tag\/neoware\" rel=\"tag\">neoware<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.technorati.com\/tag\/openview\" rel=\"tag\">openview<\/a><\/p>\n<p><!-- technorati tags end --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Four years ago we spent 70% of our R&amp;D dollars on hardware, but last year that 70% was dedicated to software. &#8212;Mark Hurd, CEO, HP HP is on the path to acquiring two more companies today: Opsware and Neoware. I don&#8217;t have a well reasoned analysis at the moment for you, but here are some [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,17,19,34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-894","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-enterprise-software","category-marketing","category-open-source","category-systems-management"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/cote\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/894","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/cote\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/cote\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/cote\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/cote\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=894"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/cote\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/894\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/cote\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=894"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/cote\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=894"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/cote\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=894"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}