WHITE PAPERS SPONSORED PROFILES JOB BOARD WEBINAR CENTER FREE SOFTWARE BZ RESEARCH ALMSHAREPOINT EVENTS CALENDAR PRINT/PDF EDITION PRINT/PDF BACK ISSUES

SUBSCRIBE TODAY CUSTOMER SERVICE EDITORIAL CALENDAR EDITORIAL BEATS GUEST VIEW GUIDE SD TIMES 100 GUIDE EVENTS CALENDAR ADVERTISING ARTICLE REPRINTS REPORT A BUG SITE MAP

ABOUT US BZ MEDIA NEWS BZ RESEARCH NEWS ON MONDAY SPTECHREPORT SPTECHWEB SPTECHCON IPHONE/IPAD DEVCON ANDROID DEVCON PRIVACY POLICY CONTACT US

HOME >> COLUMNS

SOA, ALM Dominate M&A

By David Rubinstein

January 1, 2007 — (Page 1 of 2)
So long, Mercury. Hello, HP. Such was the result of the most notable acquisition in the software development market in 2006.

Back in July, Hewlett-Packard announced it would purchase the testing and quality assurance tools behemoth for US$4.5 billion in cash. Yet, given HP’s checkered record with making software acquisitions work (see Bluestone et al.), observers almost immediately began to question the deal, and competitors offered sweet incentives to Mercury customers to switch to their testing tools.

HP tried to reassure the market that Mercury’s tools would be built into product centers that address various needs, but then it went and said it was dropping the Mercury brand, sending chills through the already nervous Mercury user base.

On the positive side for HP, the acquisition again makes the company a serious player in the software tools market—OpenView notwithstanding—and positions it to compete with IBM in the SOA space. That’s because before Mercury was bought by HP, Mercury acquired Systinet, which makes software for IT governance and asset management, for US$105 million.

Another IT governance company was snatched up this year, when BEA picked up repository software maker Flashline back in August. Interestingly, BEA also was a licensee of Systinet’s software, but in September, BEA clarified that the Flashline repository, which the company said is better at asset management, would be baked into the company’s AquaLogic 360 SOA solution.

Linux distributor Red Hat also made a SOA play this year, as it acquired open-source application server provider JBoss for US$350 million in April. JBoss has added a distributed transactions system and an enterprise service bus to Red Hat’s lineup as the company seeks to deliver on an end-to-end SOA infrastructure.

Meanwhile, the next most notable sale in the software development market last year is one that didn’t happen.

In November, venerable tools company Borland decided not to sell its IDEs, after stating in February that it would sell them. It appears that after months of talks and evaluations, Borland decided that its best course of action would be to spin out its so-called Developer Tools Group into a wholly owned subsidiary called CodeGear. This way, the company—which always said the tools were integral to its broader solutions into application life-cycle management—could control the direction and feature sets of such products as JBuilder, Delphi, C++ Builder and the other IDEs.

Pages 1 2

Share this link: http://sdt.bz/29934

Most Read Latest News Blog Resources

Zeichick’s Take: Radio moves from analog waveforms to digital packets
Streaming radio highlights the need for streaming applications to be designed to take up as little bandwidth as possible

Taking enterprise architecture to the business side
Startup Corso is bringing out a cloud-based planning platform that ties into business plans

Appcelerator Acquires Cocoafish to Add Instant Mobile Cloud Capabilities to its Industry Leading Titanium Platform
Appcelerator Offers Messaging, Social, Location and Storage Mobile Cloud Services to All Mobile App Publishers

ComponentOne Releases a Collection of 40+ UI Widgets Powered by HTML5 and jQuery
ComponentOne has announced the 2012 release of Wijmo: a kit of UI widgets for HTML5 and jQuery development

Taking enterprise architecture to the business side
Startup Corso is bringing out a cloud-based planning platform that ties into business plans

Top five apps to manage your workload
Web applications offer new ways to track your “to-do” lists

Not so fast when it comes to testing in the cloud
Developers face outsourcing, virtual lab management and mobile devices as obstacles

Xceed releases UX-focused suite for Microsoft’s WPF
"Blendables" helps match user experiences to developer visions

Are you at risk for burnout?
Burnout is a severe problem and it can strike at any time. Here's how to tell if you are nearing the edge.

Agility, mom, and apple pie
If we're to evaluate the state-of-the-art in software development, we should start with the values espoused in the Agile Manifesto.

RIM woos developers with free tablet
How do you get more apps ported to the BlackBerry PlayBook? By giving every developer a free tablet, of course!

GitHire: Use Headhunters to Find Your Perfect Programmer
Are you a hiring manager tired of scouring the job boards? Check out this new service that will find 5 people interested in your jobs.

The Hidden Costs of Software Licensing Moving beyond paper-based software licensing to more flexible, software-based licensing is a business decision. There is a growing trend tow...

Case Study: You May Need a Development Mechanic As a contractor for a major financial player in Germany, SOBEGE, a German-based consultancy specializing in embedded IT and web services, wa...

Ensuring Software Quality at a Major International Bank One of the world’s leading international banks has adopted AgitarOne technology for delivering generated unit tests for their Java software...

Load Testing Adobe Flex Applications Adobe Flex applications may be different from applications you’ve worked with before. For classic HTML web applications, the server does all...

Technorati

Digg

Slashdot

Facebook

Friendfeed

Twitter

del.icio.us

SOA Software releases project-planning suite for SOA transition Portfolio Manager provides a framework for SOA planning, helping developers prioritize services, understand dependencies, and plan architecture and governance processes, the company says. The product is marketed as being essential for creating road maps for transitioning to SOA.

Latest HP SOA Systinet automates service scaling SOA Systinet 3.00 now provides governance for business processes and deeper integration with QA life-cycle management products as well. Business process analysts can use it to create reusable business processes and to include them in the governance framework using BPEL.

SOA’s dead; long live SOA While software tool providers can no longer pin their products to the term, its best practices live on inside the cloud

Add comment

Name*
Email*
Country

Comment

SOA Software releases project-planning suite for SOA transition
Portfolio Manager provides a framework for SOA planning, helping developers prioritize services, understand dependencies, and plan architecture and governance processes, the company says. The product is marketed as being essential for creating road maps for transitioning to SOA Read More...

News on Monday
more>>
SharePoint Tech Report
more>>

Download Current Issue
FEBRUARY 2012 PDF ISSUE

Need Back Issues?
DOWNLOAD HERE

Want to subscribe?

Are you at risk for burnout?
Burnout is a severe problem and it can strike at any time. Here's how to tell if you are nearing the edge.
02/09/2012 02:16 PM EST

Agility, mom, and apple pie
If we're to evaluate the state-of-the-art in software development, we should start with the values espoused in the Agile Manifesto.
02/07/2012 11:57 AM EST

RIM woos developers with free tablet
How do you get more apps ported to the BlackBerry PlayBook? By giving every developer a free tablet, of course!
02/04/2012 01:57 PM EST

GitHire: Use Headhunters to Find Your Perfect Programmer
Are you a hiring manager tired of scouring the job boards? Check out this new service that will find 5 people interested in your jobs.
02/03/2012 12:17 PM EST

Facebook claims hacker cred
Facebook's SEC S-1 filing form includes a short essay on the Hacker Way by Mark Zuckerberg himself.
02/02/2012 08:26 AM EST

Ryan Dahl steps down
Ryan Dahl, creator of Node.js, steps back from his position as gatekeeper for the project.
02/01/2012 04:58 PM EST