Hewlett-Packard announced on Monday that it will acquire two companies expected to improve the Silicon Valley giant's business technology  offerings. Opsware, a data center automation software company founded by Netscape creator Marc Andreessen and acquired for roughly $1.6 billion, will boost HP's data center portfolio, while NeoWare, acquired for $334 million, will help HP with thin-client technology.
HP plans to have Opsware CEO Ben Horowitz lead its business technology optimization group. Neoware will join HP's business desktop unit.
"This is an incremental opportunity for HP to help companies manage data centers more appropriately," said Brian Babineau, senior analyst for Enterprise Strategy Group. The purchase enhances HP's position by adding data center infrastructure management to their existing expertise in process management, he said. Opsware gives HP "the ability to deploy servers, automate configuration, do patch management ... to automatically identify issues and take action," Babineau explained.
Complements Mercury Buy
The move to buy Opsware follows a strategic relationship the companies forged in 2003 in which Opsware provided its automation center to HP's Utility Data Center, a data center virtualization solution. In addition, the purchase of Opsware complements HP's acquisition last year of Mercury Interactive for approximately $4.5 billion. While Mercury's strength is in addressing performance bottlenecks and service-oriented architecture governance, Opsware's offerings will help HP get into "automated management of servers storage network ," Babineau said.
Marc Andreessen founded Opsware as Loudcloud in 1999; it went public in 2001. The company was hit hard when the bottom dropped out of the tech market, and in 2002 sold off its managed network services business to EDS and reinvented itself as Opsware. It boasts 350 customers, including major financial and technology companies as well as the Defense Department.
Opsware's technology provides the ability to automate deployment and management of servers and storage. In combination with Mercury's offerings, if customers "want to deploy, they will be able to tune and optimize and deploy in an automated fashion," Babineau said. "Opsware can help deploy new servers and servers with configurations that comply with best operating procedures and internal or external rules." (continued...)
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