When HP announced plans to acquire Mercury Interactive last month, HP suggested that it would be a "game changing" event. The most obvious thought is that Mercury will bring HP huge advantages in application management, particularly in the management of pre- and post-deployed distributed Web-based applications.

Mercury also brings strengths in Web services and service-oriented architectures through its acquisition of Systinet earlier this year. Coming into applications management from a lifecycle perspective vs. just monitoring deployed applications is especially critical for HP.

Mercury also offers strong capabilities in applications dependency mapping through its acquisition of Appilog in 2004. Finally, Mercury's significant investment in IT governance (project and portfolio management, resource and cost management) through its 2003 acquisition of Kintana should similarly reap positive dividends and complement HP's DecisionCenter initiative, announced in June.

So is HP's acquisition of Mercury a "game changing" event? To some degree, it is - but I would suggest it is more a striking bellwether of just how the game is changing in enterprise management than being a game-changing event itself. HP's acquisition of Mercury reflects a number of "game changing" industry dynamics, only one of which is screechingly obvious. Collectively though, HP is changing how the marketplace is evolving and changing the very nature of "the game."


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