Last month I wrote about CA acquiring NetQos. Today Computer World reports that Microsoft acquires runbook automation vendor Opalis for $60M. Till now Opalis business model has been to sell to large IT organizations with existing investments into HP, BMC, CA etc. (recently they also integrated with MS System Center which may have been the trigger for this deal).
There are several questions that come up now regarding what Microsoft will do with Opalis ?
– WIll they make it a MOM only automation solution or will they continue supporting HP, BMC and the likes ?
– Will they bring down the price of the solution from hundreds of thousands of dollars to tens of thousands of dollars to suite the mid-market ?
However I think that Microsoft is making the right move into integrating automation with MOM and probably the upcoming MS ServiceDesk. At ManageEngine we are doing something similar but instead of acquiring expensive technologies that are complex to integrate we followed the ManageEngine 90-10 rule (90% of the functionality of the Big 4 at 10% of the cost) and we are creating something cool for IT automation that will look similar to what a MS-MOM – Opalis integration would look like.
I will just post a screenshot below to kindle your interest and I assure you that pricing for this will be in thousands of dollars.(and not in 5 or 6 digits) So remember to check out the next release of OpManager – (I am sure we can beat the MS-Opalis integration release date 🙂 )
If you think you are spending too much money on IT management you must see the video below !
