Mercury Interactive
Encyclopedia
Mercury is now part of Hewlett-Packard
. The combination of Mercury Interactive and HP OpenView formed HP Software Division, a global business unit within HP Enterprise Business. Mercury offered software for application management, application delivery, change and configuration management, service-oriented architecture, change request, quality assurance, and IT governance.
In 1989, Amnon Landan and Arye Finegold founded Mercury Interactive Corporation. The company was based in California and had offices located around the world. It also had a large R&D facility in Yehud, Israel.
The Mercury Interactive legacy products are now integrated and sold as part of the HP IT Management Software
, also known as BTO (Business Technology Optimization), portfolio from the HP Software Division
Conduct Software Technologies, Inc., acquired by Mercury Interactive in a share-swap deal worth about $30M, was a privately-held software company founded in 1996 by Sharon Azulai, David Barzilai, and Ran Levi. The company provided network topology visualization products, to pinpoint bottlenecks and isolate the location of network problems both across the network and across the system infrastructure. Its main product was SiteRunner, which used multi-agent technology to pinpoint bottlenecks. As part of Mercury, Conduct alumni started a new project, nicknamed Falcon and later called Prism, that switched focus to monitoring web server traffic. The product is now called RUM (HP Real User Monitor) software and is part of the HP Business Availability Center.
Freshwater Software was a software vendor of a web server monitoring and administration tool called SiteScope. Mercury Interactive acquired Freshwater Software in 2001. The product is now called HP SiteScope software.
Performant Inc. was a software vendor of J2EE diagnostic tools. Mercury Interactive acquired Performant in 2003 for $22.5M.
Kintana Inc. was a software vendor of IT governance products. Mercury Interactive acquired Kintana in June 2003 for $225M. Kintana products are now called HP Project and Portfolio Management software.
Appilog was a software vendor of auto-discovery and application mapping software. Appilog products mapped the relationships among applications and their underlying infrastructure. Mercury Interactive acquired Appilog for $49M in 2004. Appilog products are now part of HP Universal CMDB
software, an HP Business Service Management offering.
Systinet (formerly named IdooX) was a software vendor of registry and enablement products for standard service-oriented architecture
(SOA
). Mercury Interactive acquired Systinet in 2006 for $105M. Systinet products are now called HP SOA Systinet software.
On 7 November 2006, Mercury Interactive formally became part of HP. The Mercury Interactive products are now sold by HP Software Division.
as a result of being delisted from the NASDAQ due to noncompliance with filing requirements. On 3 January 2006, Mercury missed a second deadline for restating its financials, leading to the delisting.
Chief Executive Officer Amnon Landan, Chief Financial Officer Douglas Smith, and General Counsel Susan Skaer resigned in November 2005 after a special committee at the company found that they benefited from a program to favorably price option grants. The committee found that, beginning in 1995, there were 49 instances in which the stated date of a stock option grant was different from the date on which the option appeared to have been granted. In almost every case, the price on the actual date was higher than the price on the stated grant date. A former Chief Financial Officer, Sharlene Abrams, later associated with the financial misreporting, had resigned previously in November 2001.
The Chief Executive Officer, Amnon Landan, also was found to have misreported personal stock option exercise dates to increase his profit on transactions three times between 1998 and 2001. In addition, a $1 million loan to Mr. Landan in 1999—which was repaid—did not appear to have been approved in advance by the Board of Directors and was referred to in some of the company's public filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, but was not clearly disclosed. In 2007, the SEC filed civil fraud charges against Landan, Smith, Skaer and Abrams. Without admitting or denying the SEC's allegations, Mercury Interactive agreed to pay a $28 million civil penalty to settle the Commission's charges in 2007.
The SEC settled charges against Sharlene Abrams in March 2009. Abrams agreed to pay $2,287,914 in disgorgement, of which $1,498,822 represented the "in-the-money" benefit from her exercise of backdated option grants, and a $425,000 civil penalty. In September 2009, a federal judge dismissed all charges brought by the SEC against Susan Skaer, who now goes by the name Susan Skaer Tanner.
IT Governance / ITIL
/ ITSM
Monitoring and Diagnostics
Hewlett-Packard
Hewlett-Packard Company or HP is an American multinational information technology corporation headquartered in Palo Alto, California, USA that provides products, technologies, softwares, solutions and services to consumers, small- and medium-sized businesses and large enterprises, including...
. The combination of Mercury Interactive and HP OpenView formed HP Software Division, a global business unit within HP Enterprise Business. Mercury offered software for application management, application delivery, change and configuration management, service-oriented architecture, change request, quality assurance, and IT governance.
In 1989, Amnon Landan and Arye Finegold founded Mercury Interactive Corporation. The company was based in California and had offices located around the world. It also had a large R&D facility in Yehud, Israel.
The Mercury Interactive legacy products are now integrated and sold as part of the HP IT Management Software
HP IT Management Software
HP IT Management Software is a family of Enterprise software products sold by the HP Software Division of information technology company Hewlett-Packard...
, also known as BTO (Business Technology Optimization), portfolio from the HP Software Division
Acquisitions
From 2000 until its HP acquisition in 2006, Mercury purchased a total of six software companies.Conduct Software Technologies, Inc., acquired by Mercury Interactive in a share-swap deal worth about $30M, was a privately-held software company founded in 1996 by Sharon Azulai, David Barzilai, and Ran Levi. The company provided network topology visualization products, to pinpoint bottlenecks and isolate the location of network problems both across the network and across the system infrastructure. Its main product was SiteRunner, which used multi-agent technology to pinpoint bottlenecks. As part of Mercury, Conduct alumni started a new project, nicknamed Falcon and later called Prism, that switched focus to monitoring web server traffic. The product is now called RUM (HP Real User Monitor) software and is part of the HP Business Availability Center.
Freshwater Software was a software vendor of a web server monitoring and administration tool called SiteScope. Mercury Interactive acquired Freshwater Software in 2001. The product is now called HP SiteScope software.
Performant Inc. was a software vendor of J2EE diagnostic tools. Mercury Interactive acquired Performant in 2003 for $22.5M.
Kintana Inc. was a software vendor of IT governance products. Mercury Interactive acquired Kintana in June 2003 for $225M. Kintana products are now called HP Project and Portfolio Management software.
Appilog was a software vendor of auto-discovery and application mapping software. Appilog products mapped the relationships among applications and their underlying infrastructure. Mercury Interactive acquired Appilog for $49M in 2004. Appilog products are now part of HP Universal CMDB
CMDB
A configuration management database is a repository of information related to all the components of an information system. It contains the details of the configuration items in the IT infrastructure. Although repositories similar to CMDBs have been used by IT departments for many years, the term...
software, an HP Business Service Management offering.
Systinet (formerly named IdooX) was a software vendor of registry and enablement products for standard service-oriented architecture
Software architecture
The software architecture of a system is the set of structures needed to reason about the system, which comprise software elements, relations among them, and properties of both...
(SOA
Service-oriented architecture
In software engineering, a Service-Oriented Architecture is a set of principles and methodologies for designing and developing software in the form of interoperable services. These services are well-defined business functionalities that are built as software components that can be reused for...
). Mercury Interactive acquired Systinet in 2006 for $105M. Systinet products are now called HP SOA Systinet software.
Hewlett-Packard
On 25 July 2006, Hewlett-Packard announced that it would pay approximately $4.5 billion to acquire Mercury Interactive, offering to pay $52 a share.On 7 November 2006, Mercury Interactive formally became part of HP. The Mercury Interactive products are now sold by HP Software Division.
Corporate malfeasance
From 4 January 2006 until its acquisition by Hewlett-Packard, Mercury Interactive was traded via the Pink SheetsPink Sheets
OTC Markets Group, Inc., informally known as "Pink Sheets", is a private company that provides services to the U.S. over-the-counter securities market including electronic quotations, trading, messaging, and information platforms. According to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, OTC...
as a result of being delisted from the NASDAQ due to noncompliance with filing requirements. On 3 January 2006, Mercury missed a second deadline for restating its financials, leading to the delisting.
Chief Executive Officer Amnon Landan, Chief Financial Officer Douglas Smith, and General Counsel Susan Skaer resigned in November 2005 after a special committee at the company found that they benefited from a program to favorably price option grants. The committee found that, beginning in 1995, there were 49 instances in which the stated date of a stock option grant was different from the date on which the option appeared to have been granted. In almost every case, the price on the actual date was higher than the price on the stated grant date. A former Chief Financial Officer, Sharlene Abrams, later associated with the financial misreporting, had resigned previously in November 2001.
The Chief Executive Officer, Amnon Landan, also was found to have misreported personal stock option exercise dates to increase his profit on transactions three times between 1998 and 2001. In addition, a $1 million loan to Mr. Landan in 1999—which was repaid—did not appear to have been approved in advance by the Board of Directors and was referred to in some of the company's public filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, but was not clearly disclosed. In 2007, the SEC filed civil fraud charges against Landan, Smith, Skaer and Abrams. Without admitting or denying the SEC's allegations, Mercury Interactive agreed to pay a $28 million civil penalty to settle the Commission's charges in 2007.
The SEC settled charges against Sharlene Abrams in March 2009. Abrams agreed to pay $2,287,914 in disgorgement, of which $1,498,822 represented the "in-the-money" benefit from her exercise of backdated option grants, and a $425,000 civil penalty. In September 2009, a federal judge dismissed all charges brought by the SEC against Susan Skaer, who now goes by the name Susan Skaer Tanner.
Products
- HP LoadRunnerLoadRunnerHP LoadRunner software is an automated performance and testing product from Hewlett-Packard for examining system behaviour and performance, while generating actual load. HP acquired LoadRunner as part of its acquisition of Mercury Interactive in November 2006...
software: Integrated software performance testing tools - HP QuickTest Professional software: Automated software testing
- HP Quality CenterHP Quality CenterHP Quality Center is a set of web-based test management software offerings from the HP Software Division of Hewlett-Packard, many of which were acquired from Mercury Interactive Corporation. HP Quality Center offers software quality assurance, including requirements management, test management...
software (formerly HP TestDirector for Quality Center software): Quality management software for applications - HP SiteScopeSiteScopeHP SiteScope is an agentless monitoring software focused on monitoring the availability and performance of distributed IT infrastructures, including servers, operating systems, network and Internet services, applications and application components....
software: Agentless monitoring software - HP Universal CMDBCMDBA configuration management database is a repository of information related to all the components of an information system. It contains the details of the configuration items in the IT infrastructure. Although repositories similar to CMDBs have been used by IT departments for many years, the term...
software: Configuration management database - HP Project and Portfolio Management software Project Management module: zero-client software for scheduling and managing software
- HP Business Process Testing software: Automated and manual testing software for test design, test creation, test maintenance, test execution, and test data management
- HP Diagnostics software: Diagnostic software for applications
- HP Discovery and Dependency Mapping software: Automated application and IT infrastructure mapping software
- HP Functional Testing software: Automated functional and regression testing software
- HP Real User Monitor software: Software that provides real-time visibility into application performance and availability from the user perspective
- HP Performance Center: Application performance testing management solutions
- HP Business Availability Center: Business service management solutions
Competitors
Quality Assurance- Micro Focus (acquired BorlandBorlandBorland Software Corporation is a software company first headquartered in Scotts Valley, California, Cupertino, California and finally Austin, Texas. It is now a Micro Focus subsidiary. It was founded in 1983 by Niels Jensen, Ole Henriksen, Mogens Glad and Philippe Kahn.-The 1980s:...
which acquired Segue - SilkTestSilkTestSilkTest is an automation tool for testing the functionality of enterprise applications in most versions of Windows, Solaris 9 and 10, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux WS 2.1 and 3.0. It was produced by Segue Software which was acquired by Borland in 2006. Borland was acquired by Micro Focus...
, SilkPerformer) - IBMIBMInternational Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...
(acquired RationalRational SoftwareRational Machines was founded by Paul Levy and Mike Devlin in 1981 to provide tools to expand the use of modern software engineering practices, particularly explicit modular architecture and iterative development...
) - ParasoftParasoftParasoft is an independent software vendor with headquarters in Monrovia, California. It was founded in 1987 by five graduates of the California Institute of Technology who had been working on Caltech Cosmic Cube....
IT Governance / ITIL
Itil
Itil may mean:*Atil or Itil, the ancient capital of Khazaria*Itil , also Idel, Atil, Atal, the ancient and modern Turkic name of the river Volga.ITIL can stand for:*Information Technology Infrastructure Library...
/ ITSM
- BMCBMC SoftwareBMC Software, Inc. is a multinational corporation specializing in Business Service Management software, with record annual revenue in fiscal 2009 of $1.87 billion...
- CA (acquired Niku)
- CompuwareCompuwareCompuware Corporation is a software company with products aimed at the information technology departments of large businesses. The company's services also include testing, development, professional services automation, project and portfolio management, cloud-based collaboration and performance...
(acquired ChangePoint) - IBMIBMInternational Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...
(TivoliTivoli SoftwareTivoli Software is the service management brand of the IBM Software Group. IBM purchased Austin-based Tivoli Systems, Inc. on March 4, 1996 and allowed existing executive management to operate Tivoli as a wholly owned subsidiary in the IBM Software Group...
) - MicrosoftMicrosoftMicrosoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
(System Center) - Primavera SystemsPrimavera SystemsPrimavera Systems, Inc was founded in May 1983 by Joel Koppelman and Dick Faris. It was a private company based in Pennsylvania which developed software solutions for the Project Portfolio Management market...
- Quest SoftwareQuest SoftwareQuest Software is a computer software manufacturer headquartered in Aliso Viejo, California. Founded in 1987, Quest develops, manufactures and supports software used by Information Technology professionals in a variety of industries...
Monitoring and Diagnostics
- BMCBMC SoftwareBMC Software, Inc. is a multinational corporation specializing in Business Service Management software, with record annual revenue in fiscal 2009 of $1.87 billion...
- CA (acquired Wily TechnologyWily TechnologyCA Wily Technology, formerly Wily Technology, Inc., was purchased by CA, Inc. in March 2006.- Products :*******- History :Wily was founded in 1998 by Lew Cirne...
) - CompuwareCompuwareCompuware Corporation is a software company with products aimed at the information technology departments of large businesses. The company's services also include testing, development, professional services automation, project and portfolio management, cloud-based collaboration and performance...
- CoradiantCoradiantCoradiant provides Web Application Performance Management products which enable organizations to better manage and troubleshoot Web Applications. BMC Software, Inc acquired Coradiant on 28th April 2011 for $130 million in cash. - Networkshop :...
- IBMIBMInternational Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...
- MicrosoftMicrosoftMicrosoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
(System Center)