HP is acquiring Mercury Interactive for $4.5bn (£2.5bn)
as it moves to expand its management software
portfolio.
Mercury’s software helps companies with their application
development and testing, and HP will combine Mercury’s products
with its HP OpenView management and network support software.
The deal will enable HP to increase its annual business software
revenue to around $2bn, after the Mercury business is merged into
HP’s software division.
There is little overlap between HP’s and Mercury’s products, so
HP is hoping for an easy integration between the two product
sets.
Tony Baer, principal of analyst group Onstrategies said the
merger would provide important supporting products to HP’s service
oriented architecture management tools.
Mercury employs around 3,000 and HP has so far not confirmed how
many of these staff will be redeployed.
As HP is currently involved in a major headcount cull to cut
operating costs in an attempt to improve its bottom line, jobs are
expected to go at Mercury too.
Last November, three Mercury executives resigned following an
internal investigation into alleged stock option irregularities at
the company.
Vote for your IT greats
Who have been the most influential people in IT in the past 40
years? The greatest organisations? The best hardware and software
technologies? As part of Computer Weekly’s 40th anniversary
celebrations, we are asking our readers who and what has really
made a difference?
Vote now at:
www.computerweekly.com/ITgreats