UPDATED: Looking to corral the market for automating tedious but Should the deal close by the end of HP’s fourth quarter, Opsware will Neoware’s thin-client devices attach directly to servers, eschewing the PC in what experts believe is a less expensive alternative to PC computing.
vital datacenter
tasks, HP today agreed to buy Opsware
for $1.6 billion in cash, a 38 percent premium over
Opsware’s Friday closing price of $10.28 a share.
In a separate deal, HP also bid to acquire thin-client computing software
maker Neoware for $214 million, a 6 percent premium
of its Friday closing price of $15.24.
Opsware’s software is expected to help HP provision servers, networks and
storage devices, and manage any changes in those resources to help companies
reduce upgrades normally completed with manual labor. Reducing human labor
in turn helps cut costs and improve service levels by minimizing the
downtime associated with human error.
Such jobs, including providing patches and upgrading software to newer
versions, is a dull but necessary part of IT that helps businesses hew to
the auditing tasks associated with corporate compliance regulations,
including Sarbanes-Oxley and HIPAA.
Thomas E. Hogan, senior vice president of HP Software, said Opsware’s
datacenter automation portfolio will enable HP to address customers’
“explosion in complexity” associated with the doubling of new network,
server and storage devices every five years.
“Combining these automation assets with the rest of the strength of HP’s
software portfolio provides customers with what we would describe as the
trifecta of capability,” Hogan said on a conference call.
In the broader view, Hogan said HP will use Opsware’s assets with its
existing IT
management software, cobbled from previous buys of Mercury Interactive, Peregrine Systems and SPI Dynamics, in order to boost its business technology optimization (BTO)
portfolio.
become part of the HP Software business. Opsware CEO Ben Horowitz will lead HP’s
BTO organization, reporting to Hogan.
While HP appears be the winner in the Opsware sweepstakes, rivals IBM and BMC
should also be seen as bidders in the Opsware market. After all, automating the IT operations in a datacenter is right in all
three companies’ bailiwicks.
On sheer financial resources, IBM would be the most likely candidate to
block HP’s bid, especially now that HP will have the resources to try to
overtake IBM’s leadership position in the server provisioning space.
In a question and answer session with media and analysts after the call,
Hogan declined to comment about whether he expects IBM to counter HP’s bid.
He did say that while HP competed in the server automation market versus IBM
and Opsware, the “ratio of deals where Opsware was the lead competitor and
ultimately the winner from our perspective dominated the presence of IBM.”
“We believe that Opsware has the market leading solution and how IBM might
react or respond to this is unclear to me and something you’d have to ask
them,” said Hogan, responding to a question from an internetnews.com
reporter.
IBM declined to respond to questions regarding a counter bid.
Opsware, co-founded by former Netscape Communications wunderkind Marc
Andreessen, began life in 1999 as a managed service provider called Loudcloud.
In 2002, Andreessen sold off
the managed services division to Electronic Data Systems Corp., and Loudcloud
was eventually reborn as Opsware, focused on automating datacenter tasks.
Opsware has been growing steadily. Earlier this year, IDC ranked the
relatively young company No. 2 next to IBM in the server provisioning
market.
Server provisioning is a slice of the overall server automation market IDC
claimed will top $10.4 billion in a few years.
Signs that Opsware was being pursued were unmistakable since March.
The company bought
IT operations automation startup iConclude for $51 million and reported that
full year revenue for 2006 totaled $101.7 million, up 67 percent from a year
ago.
A week later, the company held a high-profile analyst meeting in New York
to discuss in detail the state of the business; afterward, Horowitz and
Andreessen met individually with the press in a bid to hammer home Opsware’s viability.
Meanwhile, HP expects to acquire Neoware’s assets by the fourth quarter to
add Linux software, client virtualization and customization capabilities for
the business desktop unit of HP’s Personal Systems Group.
Neoware adds a Linux-based alternative to HP’s thin clients, which are based
on Microsoft Windows XPe and Windows CE, and will complement the systems
vendor’s blade PCs, blade workstations, virtual desktop infrastructure and
server-based computing.
HP said in a statement it plans to “leverage the acquisition to remain an
industry leader in reducing its environmental footprint through reduced
noise, power and packaging versus desktop PCs.”