HP Software Improves Its Portfolio By Buying Coveted Assets

HP has continued its series of major acquisitions that redefines the IT management software landscape. The combination of HP OpenView and Mercury provided a strong next generation of service-oriented solutions combining Mercury's strength in life-cycle management, CMDB, and application mapping with the data acquisition wealth of the OpenView products; the Peregrine acquisition for strong IT service management made it even more compelling. HP has now expensively acquired Opsware to enhance its data center management and process automation offering. Although HP Software's solution portfolio is strong, its revenues are still dwarfed by the results of its parent company, which puts it in a unique position: Although IBM's Tivoli software business is in a similar situation to HP Software, it has expanded its total software business to a much more sizable share of IBM overall; BMC Software and CA uniquely focus on the IT management software market. To succeed, at least in the first few years, HP will need to support HP Software as an emerging strategic force within the company, far beyond the simple recognition of its bottom-line contribution.