On the HP-Mercury Acquisition

deal architect : HP buys Mercury

I will take a backseat for a while and see how this works out before putting an indepth analysis forward, especially given I missed the con call.

Suffice to say :

1 Its interesting to see HP back in the middleware runtime and UDDI software spaces.

2. Loadrunner is a great piece of software and many shops love it with a passion. Its one of the most powerful franchises in enterprise software. That makes two bang up control points for HP Software- including OpenView Network Node Manager.

3. The IT Governance space is really hotting up. I expect SAP to make an entry here in early 2007.

4. I am not sure who is managing the integration of all the bits and pieces but it promises to be a huge challenge. Mercury had made a lot of acquisitions recently.

5. HP doesn’t have a great history in software acquisitions but we should not assume it can’t make this one stick. Its record in the noughties is already far better than the 90s.

6. HP has an important element on its side now – software scale. No need to massage figures, include OS revenues or anything, to look big.

7. Its a Big 5 now: BMC, CA, HP, IBM, Symantec. I am not including Microsoft because its strategy is not heterogeneous. BMC really needs to make a play which gives it more developer touch.

8. You have to admire HP’s balls. This is the second acquisition in two years it has made of a company that can’t get its accounts straight, after the Peregrine acquisition in 2005. I don’t mean that negatively – business is about managing risk and if HP can bring its own governance standards to bear on these software companies and get a better price because of that – then so much the better.

9: One recommendation with respect to point one: If there is any doubt whatsoever internally about the status of Systinet going forward, because its a middleware company rather than an operational management player, I suggest HP spin it out as soon as possible, perhaps sell it to BEA, to avoid another Bluestone situation.

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disclaimer: HP is not a client. Mercury’s Systinet is a company I have had some public disputes with.