This is a big move for HP. The part that is of interest from the SOA perspective is the Systinet division of Mercury.

So typically in software there have been two kinds of companies–central control oriented and distributed agility oriented. Central control oriented companies include CA, HP, Mercury, BMC and the Tivoli division of IBM. They tend to occupy a space in “the cloud” and deliver visibility by watching things happening in the network. On the flip side there are companies focused on agility. These tend to be application platform companies such as Microsoft, BEA, SAP, Oracle, and others. They tend to exist on “servers” and deliver business functionality. This acquisition further pushes the Systinet Governance functionality into “the cloud” and into the hands of centrally located control types.

What does this buy mean? First of all, it cleans up Mercury’s options scandal problems which have plagued the company since it’s delisting from the NASDAQ. It will henceforth be traded on both the NASDAQ and NYSE at HPQ. Goodbye MERQ.PK (Trading on pink paper).

It’s a huge move for HP, and securely puts HP at the center of the Systems Management arena for emerging SOA initiatives. IT tends to be about two fundamental forces, CONTROL and AGILITY. On the agility side are typically distributed business units–who are tied to application platforms and are interested to deploying applications rapidly and with the least possible amount of hassle.

On the control side are typically central IT people like the CIO. The CIO maintains job security by establishing control of IT systems at all times, this includes visibility but also policy enforcement. From this perspective the Systems Management assets of HP and the IT Management assets of Mercury (and the SOA Governance capabilities of Systinet) provide the ultimate control suite for SOA as well as IT management assets.

So this is great right? HP + Mercury + Systinet = Ultimate Control.

This is a very very attractive combination from a value perspective. However, this sale is a very centralized CIO centric sale.

The line of business owners want SOA for AGILITY purposes, and this is where Infravio has had tremendous success and strength. Whether it’s enabling business to business integration through Service Delivery Contracts(tm) or new business process centric capabilities via BPEL or other process engines. These types of drivers are attractive to lines of business.

So the turf war between registry repository giants continues, with Systinet moving squarely into the network management layer and focusing on control, and Infravio, the strongest independent player focusing on agility and business enablement through SOA Governance. Full disclosure, I work for Infravio as a VP. Nuff said.