Opsware
| Opsware logo | |
| Company type | Public (NASDAQ: OPSW) |
|---|---|
| Founded | September, 1999 (as Loudcloud, Inc.) |
| Founder | Ben Horowitz Marc Andreessen Tim Howes  |
| Headquarters | Sunnyvale, CA |
Key people | Marc Andreessen: Chairman, Ben Horowitz: CEO, Mark Cranney: EVP Sales, Tim Howes: CTO |
| Products | Software |
| Parent | Hewlett-Packard |
| Website | www.opsware.com |
Opsware, Inc. Nasdaq: OPSW is a software company based in Sunnyvale, California which offers products for server and network device provisioning, configuration and management targeted toward enterprise customers. Opsware also has offices in New York City, Seattle, Washington and Cary, North Carolina.
The company that was formerly known as Loudcloud was founded on September 9, 1999 (i.e., 9/9/99) as a managed services provider. After selling the operations side of the business to EDS in the summer of 2002, Loudcloud became Opsware and went to market as a technology company, offering the software that had been developed internally to support customer systems via automated server life-cycle management. In December 2003, Opsware acquired asset management systems provider Tangram Enterprise Solutions, and in December 2004 acquired network device configuration management vendor Rendition Networks. In July 2006 Opsware acquired CreekPath to fill out its Data Center Automation (DCA) product offering, by allowing provisioning of storage components as well.
In July 2007, HP announced that it had agreed to acquire Opsware for $1.6 billion in cash ($14.25 per share), 16x revenues. It is HP's third largest acquisition behind Compaq and Mercury.
Products
- The Server Automation System (SAS) - designed to provide provisioning, policy enforcement, compliance reporting, and patching of Windows, Unix, AIX, and Linux servers across thousands of servers.
- The Network Automation System (NAS) - designed to provide network device provisioning, policy enforcement, security lock-down, software management, and compliance reporting across thousands of devices from over 500 variants of device vendors, models, and OS versions. This product is now also being OEM'd by Cisco Systems, and is called the "Network Compliance Manager" (NCM) by Cisco.
- Application Storage Automation System (ASAS) - providing easy provisioning, management, and reporting of storage infrastructures
- Visual Application Manager (VAM) - providing customers of Opsware that use SAS and NAS with a Layer 7 view of the operation of applications, allowing for easy reporting and troubleshooting of application issues.
- The Process Automation System (PAS)- provides run-book automation from former partner iConclude (who was acquired in March of 2007).
Customers
Opsware customers include HP, GE, EDS, the Federal government of the United States and numerous Fortune 500 companies who use their software to automate their IT infrastructure.
References
- Kingsbury, Kevin. "H-P Agrees to Acquire Opsware for $1.45 Billion", The Wall Street Journal, July 23 2007. Accessed July 23 2007.