News
Computer Associates Buys Sterling Software
- By Scott Bekker
- February 14, 2000
Computer Associates International Inc. (CA) today announced an agreement to acquire Sterling Software Inc. in a stock transaction worth $4 billion.
The acquisition, which is the largest in the history of the software industry, will extend CA's offerings in the e-business, enterprise application integration (EAI), storage, and network management arenas.
The merger will create the industry's largest supplier of storage management technology, with solutions covering the enterprise from OS/390 systems, to desktops and laptops. These will include the industry's leading distributed backup and recovery products as well as storage area network (SAN) solutions.
"As the business becomes the network, we believe that all aspects of the network, end to end, become absolutely critical," said Sanjay Kumar, president and COO of CA (www.ca.com). With the merger, CA will combine its Jasmine ii information infrastructure with Sterling Software's Cool suite to provide personalized EAI solutions. The two companies also plan to provide end-to-end e-business solutions through the expansion of CA's Neugent neural networking technology products and integration of many Sterling Software network management solutions.
"Sterling (www.sterling.com) are the kings of disk management," said Kumar, and the two companies hope to extend that reputation with a planned end-to-end storage solution for both Windows NT and OS/390 operating environments.
By the start of CA's annual user conference, CA-World, in April, the merged companies hope to debut integrated products. Sterling Software clients and partners will be invited to the conference in place of Sterling's Worldwide Customer Conference. -- Isaac Slepner
About the Author
Scott Bekker is editor in chief of Redmond Channel Partner magazine.