Micro Focus to buy Serena Software in $540m deal
British firm Micro Focus is set to acquire Californian software provider Serena.
UK enterprise software company Micro Focus has announced plans to buy application lifecycle management company Serena Software in a deal worth over half a billion dollars.
Based in Berkshire but with a global customer base, Micro Focus provides software and consultancy services to firms looking to upgrade legacy systems to more modern platforms. Through the acquisition of IT management firm Serena Software, Micro Focus CEO Stephen Murdoch believes it's customers who will benefit the most.
"Today's announcement marks another significant milestone for Micro Focus, bringing together two highly complementary solution sets that enable customers to build better applications, adapt to changing business conditions more rapidly and maximise the value of existing investments to drive further innovation within their business," he says.
"With Serena, we are further positioned to deliver richer solutions for the complex business demands customers are solving today -- with greater reliability, predictability and less risk of failure," Murdoch adds.
According to the official statement from Micro Focus, purchasing Serena Software will enable customer organisations to "increase the quality of their applications and speed the delivery of change in order to build and deploy high-quality business applications".
Founded in 1980 and based in the heart of Silicon Valley, Serena Software specialises in application development, software configuration and change management, and business process management.
The company is also viewed in some quarters as a force in DevOps, a software development methodology seen as increasingly important to the modern enterprise.
Greg Hughes, president and CEO of Serena Software, describes the planned acquisition by Micro Focus as "an exciting announcement that promises to offer substantial value to Serena customers and partners".
"Our complementary strengths in software development and IT operations will only serve to provide a stronger foundation for the next-generation of applications and services they require to meet ongoing business demands," he says.
The transaction is expected to close in early May 2016, subject to receipt of competition clearances in the US and Germany, and will be funded by Micro Focus's existing budgets, an extension of credit facilities, and additional sales of shares valued at £150m.
Micro Focus's acquisition of Serena Software is not the company's first purchase of a rival enterprise software firm: it bought US-based The Attachmate Group for an estimated $1.2 billion in late 201.