Mercury Interactive has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Systinet.
Mercury is continuing its alignment in the IT governance space with the acquisition of Systinet, a New York-headquartered service oriented architecture (SOA) governance specialist that lists Amazon.com and Motorola among its customers. Indeed, the $105 million deal is a far-sighted addition to Mercury’s leading Business Process Optimization (BTO) portfolio.
Systinet will continue to operate as an autonomous unit within Mercury, while integration at touch points across the Mercury portfolio will be pursued within R&D. Subject to customary closing conditions and regulatory approvals, the acquisition is expected to close during the first quarter of 2006 and is expected to be accretive to Mercury’s earnings in 2007.
Corporate IT is moving towards the SOA model and the proliferation of business services will require their management. Creating tools that are specifically geared towards that goal is the emphasis of Systinet, which can offer a unified platform built around an SOA information repository.
The Systinet Blizzard platform includes a services registry, contract management between services and consumers, policy management for creation and enforcement of policies, impact management such as dependency and what-if analysis, as well as services lifecycle management. These all tie in well with Mercury’s BTO and its emphasis on applications.
At the acquisition press call Mercury shed no further light on its internal time line concerning re-submitting SEC accounts, but stressed that the timing of the Systinet acquisition should be viewed as a measure of the company’s confidence in shortly putting the current difficulties behind it.
As the use of web services increases, Mercury will be in a prime position to offer governance tools that span services and traditional applications. Seen in this light, the acquisition of Systinet is an excellent move by the vendor.
Source: OpinionWire by Butler Group (www.butlergroup.com)
