CA said Monday it has acquired privately held Oblicore, which produces Service Level Management (SLM) software for more than 120 enterprises and service providers, including AT&T, ABN AMRO, British Telecom, Lufthansa and Siemens Medical Solutions. The financial terms were not disclosed.
CA Vice President Jay Fry said the acquisition combines a unique top-down approach to SLM and a strong metrics correlation engine with the CA portfolio of IT management products.
“With Oblicore integrated into its portfolio, CA can credibly close the gap between IT and the business and help realize the goal of IT as a service — more than any other competitor,” Fry said. “The Oblicore capabilities fit nicely with CA’s existing service management offerings, as well as the CA tools that can provide information feeds about the status of the IT environment.”
More Flexibility
The entire service portfolio management (SPM) arena — which includes SLM, the service catalog, financial management, and project and portfolio management — has been getting considerable attention from customers, noted Forrester Research Senior Analyst Evelyn Hubbert. “IT planning, IT finance, IT strategy, and IT services have all become additional topics which large enterprises need to address to survive,” Hubbert said.
CA’s acquisition of its longtime partner is expected to provide the security software vendor with flexibility it did not have when the two firms were operating as separate entities, Hubbert observed. “Partnerships like the one CA and Oblicore had are nice but don’t allow tight integration on all areas of the value delivery chain — sales, marketing, product, services,” Hubbert said.
“Oblicore’s technology for modeling relationships between services, contracts and metrics is a unique capability in the market,” Fry said. “By owning this capability — rather than simply partnering — CA can more quickly and richly integrate it into solutions for competitive advantage…