HP Agrees To Acquire Novadigm, Consera

Hewlett-Packard Co. on Wednesday said it has agreed to acquire Novadigm Inc. and closely held Consera Software, and plans to add the two companies' technology-management software to the HP OpenView portfolio.

Under the terms of the Novadigm deal, HP will pay $6.10 a share for the Mahway, N.J., company, putting the value of the agreement at about $121 million, HP officials said. HP currently owns 5 percent of Novadigm.

Terms for the acquisition of Bellevue, Wash.-based, Consera were not disclosed. Both acquisitions are expected to close in the next several months, following approval from both companies' stockholders.

The acquired products moves HP further along in its Adaptive Enterprise strategy, which is to provide technology that enables companies to manage hardware and software associated with the full cycle of a business activity. In the past, technology-management software, such as HP OpenView, focused on individual components of an IT infrastructure, such as servers or desktops.

The latest acquisitions complement previous purchases from HP. In September 2003, the Palo Alto, Calif., company acquired Talking Blocks and software from Baltimore Technologies. Two months later, HP bought Persist Technologies."They're compiling pieces that are very important and certainly necessary for their portfolio," Stephen Elliot, analyst for market researcher International Data Corp., said. "But continued execution on the integration side, as well as sales and marketing, will ultimately determine the success of these deals."

In general, Novadigm software enables IT departments to automate changes across all technology components of a business activity, rather than reconfiguring each piece one at a time. Consera's technology is used to model a business activity, often referred to as a "service," mapping the workflow to all underlying IT components. A service, for example, could be a custom trading application within a financial institution.

"For a lot of IT shops moving away from component management to service management, these are critical parts," Elliot said.

For most companies, however, the shift in how they're managing IT infrastructures is just beginning. "If it's a 10-step process, then we're probably between steps one and three," Elliot said.

Novadigm and Consera are expected to become a part of HP's Software Global Business Unit, with their products sold through HP's OpenView software channels. HP takes a modular approach to its management software, which means customers can buy the technology from HP, or buy pieces to work with another vendor's products."However, it will all be better together," Nora Denzel, senior vice president of HP Adaptive Enterprise, said during a teleconference announcing the deals. "If you go with HP, then they'll be one neck to choke (if there's a problem)."