HP to buy Mercury Interactive

On Tuesday 7/25/2006, CNNMoney.com (along with *many* others) broke the news that the rumored HP/Mercury deal is really happening. A summary and my reaction is below. See the entire release here and draw your own conclusions.

July 26 2006: 9:22 AM EDT

NEW YORK (Reuters) -- Hewlett-Packard agreed on Tuesday to buy Mercury Interactive for about $4.5 billion in stock, or $52 per share, in a bid to expand the computer maker's business software operations.

The deal, which sent shares of the No. 2 personal computer maker down 4 percent, should help boost sales of HP's (Charts) OpenView systems management software, which makes it easier for far-flung businesses to monitor the hardware, software and networks running throughout their organizations.

The purchase of the former star Israeli technology company also puts HP in closer competition with other major systems management software providers, including IBM's Tivoli unit, CA Inc.'s UniCenter and BMC Software.

Since last year, a number of top Mercury executive have left amid a regulatory probe into its stock option granting practices. The financial scandal drove Mercury, once a top performing stock, to delist from the Nasdaq market.

Folks, you may not realize it, but this is major. Until about a year ago, over 75% (up to 90% depending on which year and which report you read) of the total revenue in the test automation and test management tools market went to Mercury, Rational and Segue since the beginning of the "Dot-Com Era". Over the last 13 months this seemingly consistent market has been turned on it's head:

Choosing Performance Testing with Scott Barber (Stickyminds interview reprint)

A Word with the Wise:
Choosing Performance Testing with Scott Barber
by Joseph McAllister

Every kid eventually puts some thought into the question "What do you want to be when you grow up?" For PerfTestPlus CTO Scott Barber, who specializes in context-driven performance testing and analysis for distributed multi-user systems, the answer was not "performance tester." He planned to follow in the footsteps of his father, an industrial arts teacher, and sought an ROTC-scholarship-funded degree in civil engineering. In his junior year of college, though, Scott learned that his first years with the Army Corps of Engineers would involve digging foxholes for infantry rather than building bridges with the Seabees.

"I decided that if I was going to be crossing the front lines, I'd much rather be carrying heavy weaponry than heavy shovels," he says.