CA, Microsoft, and Novell Acquisitions

CA Inc. announced it has acquired IDFocus LLC, an identity management technology provider while Novell Inc. said it was purchasing Managed Objects Inc., a business service management software provider. In other news, Microsoft Corp. closed its acquisition of DATAllegro Inc., a data warehousing vendor.

Focal Points:

• CA purchased IDFocus in an effort to boost its information security offerings. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. The company was founded in 1997 and is located in Palo Alto, CA. IDFocus Advance Components Extensions (ACE) software includes an ability to help customers meet compliance demands by proactively preventing segregation of duties (SoD) violations. As CA Identity Manager provisions users, it runs a check on the SoD policies set up in the IDFocus software. If a policy violation is identified, CA Identity Manager is designed to prevent the provisioning event from taking place, proactively managing compliance needs and preventing violations before they happen. Additionally, IDFocus software helps increase efficiencies by taking provisioning to a more specific, finer-grained entitlements level and can link workflows and approvers to very specific user attributes.
• Novell has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire the McLean, VA-based Managed Objects for an undisclosed sum. The deal is expected to close in Novell's 2009 first fiscal quarter. The Managed Objects products complement and extend Novell's existing systems, resource and virtualization management solutions by adding flexible service modeling, advanced analytics and unique Web 2.0-based visualization technology. The company will be fully integrated into Novell's Systems and Resource Management business unit.
• Microsoft completed its purchase of DATAllegro and expects to have its software product that will be built on DATAllegro warehousing technology out in 2010. The acquisition is being touted as extending SQL Server deeper into the data warehouse by allowing it to scale to support hundreds of terabytes of data. Founded in 2003, DATAllegro sold a massively parallel processing (MPP) data warehouse appliance based on the Ingres database. Microsoft is intending to use the software technology only and does not plan on selling DATAllegro-based hardware solutions. Microsoft states it is retaining most of DATAllegro's team and its headquarters in Aliso Viejo, Calif.

Experton Group believes it is more economical for vendors to add market-tested functionality to their software lines through acquisition than through R & D, especially when it can take a number of releases before new features satisfy customer requirements. However, having product on the ground does not mean that users will find it integrates well with the vendor's other products and that integration could, in itself, take two or more years to achieve.  IT executives should expect integration and support issues with any acquired products during the first few quarters, as well as underlying foundational changes once the integration occurs that could cause re-integration at the user site.