CA to Buy IT Monitoring Solutions Firm Nimsoft

In an effort to extend CA's ability to meet the unique IT management needs of "emerging enterprises" and managed service providers, IT management software company CA Inc. has signed a definitive agreement to buy IT performance and availability monitoring solutions provider Nimsoft, Inc.

According to CA's Wednesday announcement, the acquisition valued at $350 million will add an entirely new set of customers to its base, which has historically consisted of large enterprises. By leveraging Nimsoft's market expertise and technology, CA hopes to tap into the market of organizations with annual revenues from $300 million to $2 billion, which it CA calls emerging enterprises and estimates will account for approximately a quarter of the software spending in CA's market space by 2013.

"With our planned acquisition of Nimsoft, CA will be equipped to capture several important growth market segments -- including emerging enterprises, emerging national economies, and the MSPs who are providing these customers with IT management services via the cloud," CA cloud products and solutions executive vice president Chris O'Malley said. "Penetration of these markets will further expand our global leadership in IT management and complement our existing strength with large enterprise customers."

Nimsoft's technology and go-to-market approach also will leverage CA's presence in growing international markets such as Brazil, Russia, India and China, where CA expects cloud computing and hosted/managed services to play a central role in business development. Nimsoft has developed monitoring and reporting solutions for public cloud and on-demand offerings like Google Apps for Business, the Rackspace Cloud, Amazon Web Services and EC2, Salesforce.com, as well as internal applications, databases, and physical and virtual server environments.

Now with the capabilities to offer one of the most comprehensive suites of IT monitoring and management solutions in the industry, the acquisition will extend CA's leadership position in the service assurance market segment. These solutions provide IT organizations with complete insight into application behaviors and infrastructure health, helping them ensure the reliability of critical business services and optimally utilize available hardware capacity.

Nimsoft was originally established as Nimbus Software in 1998 and renamed Nimsoft in 2004. Since then it has consistently grown revenue double digit year over year. It now has approximately 800 customers, including nearly 300 MSPs and operates primarily in the US and Europe. CA intends to work closely with Nimsoft's robust network of MSPs, hosting providers, outsourcing providers and partners to penetrate emerging markets.

Nimsoft president and chief executive officer Gary Read said CA and Nimsoft are a perfect match and will redefine IT management for years to come. "We are joining a company that wrote the book on enterprise management," Read said. "We're bringing a very strong track record of success in the hosted and managed services segment and with mid-market enterprises. CA clearly shares our commitment to address customers' evolving requirements for the management of their IT systems, including their move to virtualization and the cloud."

Nimsoft's operations will report under CA's Cloud Products and Solutions Business Line. It is anticipated that the majority of Nimsoft's approximately 120 employees will remain with CA after the completion of the transaction, which is expected to close by March 31, 2010.

Today's announcement follows five acquisitions over the past nine months including Cassatt, NetQoS and Oblicore, as well as the planned acquisition of 3Tera.

The 451 Group senior analyst Dennis Callaghan said the way organizations deploy business services continues to change, and the way they manage those services must adapt. "CA's acquisition of Nimsoft -- following its other recent acquisitions in the cloud computing space -- demonstrates that CA is expanding its capabilities to meet the needs of its existing enterprise customers while also stepping up to address those of the emerging enterprise and MSP sectors."