HP waves OpenView into history
OpenView is no longer an official product in the HP portfolio, it emerged on Tuesday.
Although the company didn't make an official announcement at its Software Universe event in Vienna this week, OpenView has now been swallowed into a new group called HP Software, where all of HP's many software products will now reside.
HP's newest and largest software acquisition, Mercury Interactive, will also lose its name and become part of HP Software.
While HP has been on a growth strategy, it has been acquiring software companies at an aggressive rate — nine in the last three years. Now the company aims to bring order into the line-up by minimising the number of separate brands. It is now all about selling software capabilities and functions rather than discrete products with their own brand names, HP's head of software, Tom Hogan, made clear at Software Universe.
"We have been on a strategy for some time to kill some brands," said Ian Curtis, HP's new head of software in the UK. Having gained a range of new products through its various software acquisitions, HP has been going through the job of pulling them together to make a coherent offering under the HP Software label, Curtis explained.
"With a lot of tools in the HP Software portfolio, it is not a trivial process to connect all these together," Curtis said.
Yet the demise of OpenView was still dealt with in a quiet and understated message. It slipped out in a casual comment made in Hogan's keynote address to the conference, and was only confirmed under direct questioning by journalists.
HP is also expected to announce a new tie-up with Microsoft later on Wednesday.