Computer Associates has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Wily Technology.
Wily is a specialist in monitoring and optimizing the performance of J2EE applications, as well as the Java runtime engine – its instrumentation technology is shipped as part of Sun’s J2SE 5.0 release. According to a notice sent out to customers, Wily will operate as the Wily Technology Division within CA, headed by its current CEO.
For CA, this acquisition fills a gap in its Business Service Optimization division, dealing with applications in the production environment, and following on from Niku and its project portfolio management offerings. This is a good move, and one that strengthens CA’s position in the business services management and APM market/overall enterprise services market.
As part of CA, Wily’s R&D team will have greater resources to draw on to expand the range of technologies that can be monitored by its tools.
Two other recent acquisitions highlight the activity in the business services and performance management areas. Firstly, IBM’s acquisition of network services management specialist Micromuse, announced just before Christmas, adds to the considerable IBM Tivoli portfolio. The all-cash price paid was $865 million, and Micromuse will operate as a business unit within IBM Tivoli, as well as integrating its software and solutions into IBM Tivoli software and hardware.
The other acquisition, announced on January 9, 2006, was Mercury’s purchase of Systinet. Mercury is a player in the IT governance area and Systinet is a specialist in service-oriented architecture (SOA) governance, so for Mercury this forms part of a long-term strategy that foresees growth in web services and the need to manage business services.
It will be interesting to see how the other main vendors in this market address managing SOA, but for CA and IBM, the recent acquisitions represent consolidation in a maturing market.
Source: OpinionWire by Butler Group (www.butlergroup.com)
