CA Technologies is selling off its information governance software portfolio to Autonomy for an undisclosed sum.
The deal, which was announced Wednesday, is scheduled to close in the third quarter and will not be material to either company’s financial results, according to a statement.
While the acquisition may not be significant in terms of monetary value, it underscores a broader strategy shift for CA toward supporting cloud computing. It also gives Autonomy’s already broad portfolio of enterprise search, e-discovery and content management products another boost.
Specifically, Autonomy will gain CA Records Manager for managing physical records, as well as CA Message Manager, which enables companies to store and organize messages in manner that meets regulatory compliance.
Autonomy intends to continue supporting and developing the products, which will be available through the company’s private cloud as well.
The agreement makes sense, particularly for CA, according to one observer.
CA has long been criticized for having “way too many products,” said Redmonk analyst Michael Coté.
“There’s a lot to be said for selling off parts that are not core, or close to core, of their current strategy and cash cows,” he said.
It’s not as if CA will “go and strip down it’s good old fashioned, behind-the-firewall IT management stuff,” Coté added, “but this info governance unit is a good pick with an obviously willing buyer to start trimming.”
At its recent CA World user conference, CA did a good job portraying its big-picture strategy in light of its recent cloud-centric acquisitions, which include monitoring vendor Nimsoft and 3Tera, maker of an application deployment platform, he added.
“Narrowing down their portfolio is a good way to make sure they can do the multi-year work it’ll take to fully deliver,” Coté said.
