Hewlett-Packard Co. Thursday announced its intentions to acquire TruLogica Inc. and roll the company’s user provisioning software into HP’s larger OpenView management portfolio.
Dallas-based TruLogica’s software automates the management of user privileges across multiple systems.
HP says the purchase will add to its utility computing architecture, Adaptive Enterprise, which integrates HP’s hardware, software and services to help users quickly respond to changing resource needs. HP competitors Computer Associates International Inc., IBM Corp., Microsoft Corp. and Sun Microsystems Inc. have all laid out plans for so-called utility computing technologies.
TruLogica’s 30 employees will be brought over to HP, and HP expects to merge the staff with those at HP’s Dallas offices. Primarily the Dallas office supports HP’s work on the company’s OpenCall suite, software geared toward telecommunications professionals. The deal is expected to close by the end of HP’s second quarter, and the financial details were not disclosed.
The software will be sold separately by HP to start, and then company executives say customers should expect to see the technology directly integrated with HP OpenView Select Access, identity management software. The integrated product is scheduled to be announced around the same time the deal closes, HP says.
“TruLogica will help us to provide customers with the nirvana of single sign-on, user access tracking and automated provisioning,” says Al Smith, CTO of HP Management Software. “Select Access provided identity management for assets, and TruLogica will add user provisioning and de-provisioning features to the mix.”
OpenView Select Access authorizes and authenticates users on an automated basis. Unlike some identity-management tools that might provide security, this software doesn’t secure the network as much as automate a process and ensure policies are enforced, HP says.
Smith says TruLogica became an attractive acquisition target for HP not only because the price was right and the location worked well for HP, but also because TruLogica used models and policy-based management in its software. The two criteria sync up with HP’s plans to help customers loosely couple and integrate systems to allow for automation and dynamic actions across enterprise nets.
“We look for software that supports where we want to go with our products. We support standard-based tools so integration won’t be as much of a challenge,” says Todd DeLaughter, vice-president and general manager of the Management Software Organization at HP.
Aside from the Adaptive Enterprise product pitch, HP intends to sell point products, bundled software packs and services that will help enterprise IT managers create a “management ecosystem” in which IT can quickly adapt to changing business requirements.
“We are hoping to get the technology and our products to a place where it’s more like assembly than integration for our customers, but we are still at the integration stage,” Smith says.
HP will have its integration work cut out for it. The company announced last month its plans to acquire Novadigm and Consera. This TruLogica acquisition brings the number of technologies that HP has acquired in the past six months to six.
In September, HP acquired Talking Blocks for Web services management and Baltimore Technologies’ Select Access technology for identity management. In November, HP acquired Persist Technologies for information life-cycle management.
