HP Buys Two More Companies On March Toward Automation

The companies, publicly traded Novadigm and closely held Consera Software, provide technologies that HP executives called "powerful" additions to the Holy Grail of utility computing.

"Management software is the next big frontier for IT," said Nora Denzel, senior vice president of HP Adaptive Enterprise. "Together, these companies put repetitive, error-prone IT management tasks on cruise control and free up IT time to focus on innovation."

Denzel said HP's sales channel will have access to both technologies within a few months. Software from Mahwah, N.J.-based Novadigm will enable OpenView to handle automatic change and configuration management. Specifically, Novadigm's technology automates the standardized deployment of IT changes in a mixed environment to achieve a desired end state. It also automates configuration management, allowing IT resources to deliver services according to established business policies.

Consera's service-modeling software helps customers design a standardized IT environment that automatically adapts to changing business demands. According to Russ Daniels, CTO of HP's software business unit, technology from the Bellevue, Wash., company should enable OpenView customers to create models that represent their business services, which then map to underlying IT components.

"Models are the best way to capture best practices," Daniels said. "This kind of technology provides customers with a way to leverage best practices like they've never done before."

Under the terms of the Novadigm agreement, HP will pay $6.10 per outstanding Novadigm share. While the exact cost of the Novadigm acquisition was not disclosed, the share price for the public company could put the Novadigm price tag at around $121 million.

Financial terms of the Consera deal were not released, although Consera CEO Frank Artale did note that he expected HP to keep his team intact throughout assimilation.

These deals are not HP's first moves to add adaptive technologies to its OpenView suite. During the past six months, the Palo Alto, Calif., vendor has acquired a variety of software products intended to streamline IT resource management for the enterprise.

In November, the firm acquired life-cycle management company Persist Technologies. Two months earlier, HP acquired Web services developer Talking Blocks and the Select Access business of Baltimore Technologies, a company that focuses on identity management.

A company spokesman said both the Novadigm and Consera products initially will be branded as OpenView and sold as part of the modular software suite. HP will further integrate the products later.

As of Wednesday afternoon, it was unclear how the acquisitions and potential product integration will affect HP's relationships with vendors Altiris and Opsware, which compete with Novadigm's automated configuration and change management software. Both Denzel and Daniels said there were no intentions to change partnerships at this time.