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Showing posts from September, 2016

Industry Insights: The Cycle of Innovation: The Rise and Fall of HP Software

I find the cycles in technology fascinating, and it's an unfolding lesson of historical cycles. Although we believe our industry moves at a rapid pace there are many macro cycles which occur over decades, the patterns do not change much. The first and current example is HP Software (with more focus on IT Operations). Let's rewind to the foundational pieces of HP Software, which came from the acquisition of Mercury Interactive in 2006. HP spent $4.5b to purchase Mercury and built a large well-established business off the platform in both Quality Assurance (QA) and IT Operations. Over time HP failed to invest, in what at one point was the market dominance of QA and a substantial footprint in ITOps, these once large market shares eroded as technologies commoditized and the buying shifted to best-of-breed. HPs solution set became difficult to implement (even for HP engineers), and ongoing management is hard requiring consulting and many resources. Having managed this portfolio at