HP Buys Peregrine for $425M - UPDATE

Probably the biggest news to come out of last week was HP's decision to purchase Peregrine Systems for $425M. This has effectively bought HP much closer to their IT Service Management (ITSM) Customers by purchasing Peregrine's excellent core software products including: ServiceCenter, AssetCenter and the various underpinning tools that enable self-service, auto discovery and of course, the icing on the cake, one centralised (all seeing, all knowing) integrated CMDB which works across the products.

HP's website did originally have a link embedded within their press release, which has subsequently been changed, which (to us) read like an internal briefing note - so perhaps there was a little bit of early confusion about what was an "internal" V's an "external" link. Nevertheless, the original link took us through to a Q&A page that outlined what would happen to the Peregrine products next.

Our take, here at Dr. ITiL, was that ServiceCenter's 'best features' would quickly be integrated into HP's core OpenView architecture, whilst AssetCenter appeared to be the real prize. In our view, the original link also talked postively about the future of the Peregrine team - rather than hinting at job losses.

Current Peregrine Customers are typically large scale Enterprises who already have considerable investment in either HP technology or HP's Openview - so it's just a matter of understanding the overall roadmap and how the integration of these technologies might work.

For companies that use alternative product suites to AssetCenter - it's going to lead to an interesting investment decision about migrating to the overall HP platform. The saving grace might just be the payback or ROI in Peregrine's Auto-Discovery and Centralised CMDB technology.

HP's move was a bold one - and one that has really boulstered it's position in the marketplace, as well as taken HP a step closed to more of it's existing as well as 'nearly' Customers.

It will be interesting to see how IBM react. The most natural step would be for IBM to purchase Mercury for it's Business Systems Management technology, and integrate that into the overall Tivoli suite. The 'fit' appears good, on paper at least.

Mercury have been going through a tough time though recently with them admitting that they will have to restate earnings from 2002, 03 and 04 (from the press releases we read, anyway). This has had an adverse affect on their share price. Nevertheless they have a powerful suite of ITIL related products - including their excellent IT Governance Center.

Perhaps IBM is waiting in the wings to snatch a better bargain?

Further Coverage:-

http://managementsoftware.hp.com/news/press/pr/2005/pr_0089.html

http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=171200367&tid=5979

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/business/20050925-9999-1b25prgn.html

Mercury to restate Earnings