HP: We're still big on OpenView

SYDNEY, Australia--Hewlett-Packard has melded Peregrine's asset management technology with its OpenView management software, an HP executive said, dismissing a Gartner report that it is losing its traction in this market segment.

The product integration, announced Monday, comes three months after HP completed its $425 million acquisition of Peregrine last December.

Peregrine's AssetCenter, combined with HP's OpenView Service Desk, will provide businesses with greater insight and control over their information technology assets, including software, workstations and servers, said Todd DeLaughter, general manager of HP's OpenView business unit. He was speaking at the HP Software Forum here, the first such event held in the Asia-Pacific region.

DeLaughter said the integration underpins HP's Active Configuration Management Database strategy. CMDB is used to store data about the state of a company's IT assets, including those generated by competing enterprise management software. It handles data such as system errors and software changes, as well as corporate data on employees and business units. It also shows the relationship between company assets.

Todd explained that intelligence features built into HP's Active CMDB allow businesses to consolidate disparate system management data from multiple sources. CMDB will then synchronize such data and provide companies with an overview of their IT operations, he added.

"With Peregrine, the OpenView business is close to $1 billion. Tell me we won't be around in three to four years. I think the reverse will be true."

--David Gee, vice president, HP Software Asia-Pacific and Japan

In its annual technology trends report last December, however, Gartner predicted that by 2008, only IBM and Computer Associates International would remain on the list of top four management software vendors, which today includes HP and BMC Software.

The analyst firm did not identify the companies that would fill the void, nor did it say if its forecast had taken into consideration HP's Peregrine acquisition.

Gartner did say that HP may lose its seat, not from having a weaker product, but because of potential competition from market rivals with equally deep pockets, such as EMC, Symantec and Microsoft.

David Gee, general manager of HP Software Asia-Pacific and Japan, rebuffed Gartner's prediction, noting that the company's OpenView worldwide software revenue had increased 34 percent year over year, during the first quarter of this year.

"Our growth in the distributed management software space in mature markets pretty much outstripped everyone," Gee told ZDNet Asia.

"There is simply no valid empirical data that backs up Gartner's assertions," he said. "With Peregrine, the OpenView business is close to $1 billion. Tell me we won't be around in three to four years. I think the reverse will be true."

He noted that HP's software licensing revenue has been growing one to three times more than competitors BMC, CA and IBM. "The facts speak for themselves," he said.

Gee is also unfazed about upcoming competitors, although he is keeping track of their plans.

"Microsoft has placed itself as a competitor in the management software space," he said. "In the small workgroup environment, they will have market presence. But the moment you switch to a heterogeneous environment, their footprint is fairly minimal."

Symantec also has its hands full with its Veritas Software merger, so Gee does not see the security company as a competitor in the short to midterm.

"EMC has acquired Smarts (an event automation and network systems management software vendor), but we don't see them as a competitor...although it is one of the companies we watch very closely in terms of what their long-term ambitions could be," Gee said.

According to a separate report released by Gartner in December of last year, HP's Peregrine acquisition will add IT asset management capabilities which were "sorely lacking" in HP's OpenView portfolio. The research firm said that AssetCenter has one of the largest asset management installed bases among enterprises worldwide, with more than 800 customers on active maintenance contracts.