CA comes to Cassatt's rescue

It appears that CA has come to the rescue and has acquired the intellectual property and some of the staff of Cassatt (see CA's statement on this acquisition). I spoke with a number of people, including my good friend and fellow IDC alumni, Bill Peterson, and have come to the following conclusions.

Snapshot Analysis

CA is acquiring the technology that Cassatt has developed and has brought on  Cassatt’s Rob Gingell, CTO, Steve Oberlin, chief scientist and founder, and developers, engineers and other key employees. I'm happy to see that CA came along and "saved Cassatt's bacon from the fire." This means that CA is acquiring some powerful technology and equally powerful talent which can be used in a number of ways. A reasonable question is if this the beginning of a CA Cloud Computing division? Although Cassatt's Active Response is aimed at "green computing," internal clouds and orchestrating virtualized environments today, the technology certainly has the potential of being enhanced to support a broader range of uses.

My chief concern is one of differing corporate cultures.  I can think of a number of times that startups were acquired by larger established players where there were similar culture mismatches and, often times, the key people who created the technology left as soon as their contracts would allow, taking their creativity and talent with them.  The acquiring company was left with a shell of a company.

Unasked for, shoot-from-the-hip advice

CA, you've acquired some interesting technology and have brought on some great people. I would suggest that you give them a cash infusion, help them reach your customer base through your sales channels and don't try to make them over in your image.  They need some booster rockets not a complete corporate make over.