Computer Associates is one pf the world’s largest software companies, providing solutions and services for the management of IT infrastructure, business information and application development. The company has six product areas: Unicenter, for enterprise management; eTrust, for security; BrightStor, for storage; AllFusion, for application lifecycle management; Advantage, for data management and application development, and CleverPath, for Portal and Business Intelligence. Since its formation in the mid-1970s, the company has obtained more than 200 patents worldwide and has more than 900 patent applications pending.
CA to buy IT monitoring co Nimsoft in US$350m cash deal
New York headquartered IT group, CA Inc (NASDAQ: CA) has signed a definitive agreement to acquire privately-held IT monitoring specialist Nimsoft in an all-cash transaction valued at US$350m. CA said that the acquisition significantly extends its ability to meet the needs of emerging enterprises and MSPs (managed service providers) which, according to CA, are playing leading roles in the growth of cloud computing.
The NASDAQ listed IT company estimates that emerging enterprises, categorized as organizations with annual revenues between US$300m-US$2bn, will account for approximately a quarter of software spending in CA's market space by 2013. By leveraging Nimsoft's market expertise and technology, CA expects to add an entirely new set of customers to its base, which has historically been comprised of large enterprises.
Nimsoft's operations will be incorporated into CA's ‘Cloud Products and Solutions’ business and It is anticipated that the majority of Nimsoft's employees will remain with CA. CA expects the deal to have a minimal impact on FY2010 and to be dilutive to earnings per share in FY2011. The transaction is expected to close by the end of CA's fourth fiscal quarter, ending March 31st 2010.
"With our planned acquisition of Nimsoft, CA will be equipped to capture several important growth market segments - including emerging enterprises, emerging national economies, and the MSPs who are providing these customers with IT management services via the cloud", CA Cloud Products and Solutions Executive VP, Chris O'Malley, commented.
According to CA, Nimsoft's technology and ‘go-to-market’ approach also will leverage CA's presence in international markets, where the company expects cloud computing and hosted/managed services to play a central role in business development.
The ‘Nimsoft Unified Monitoring’ product is designed to allow MSPs complete visibility into the performance and availability of their customers' business applications, across both internal and external infrastructures. CA said noted that Nimsoft has developed monitoring and reporting solutions for public cloud and on-demand offerings like Google Apps for Business, The Rackspace Cloud, Amazon Web Services and EC2, Salesforce.com, as well as internal applications, databases, and physical and virtual server environments.
Nimsoft, originally established in 1998 as Nimbus Software, is backed by a group of private equity and venture capital investors, including Northzone Ventures, whose other portfolio companies include web-based businesses spotify.com, stepstone.com and lastminute.com. Goldman Sachs and JMI Equity are also investors in Nimsoft.
