BMC Software may acquire CA Technologies and thereby take CA private, but the deal may require bank debt, according to Bloomberg. A potential BMC-CA business combination has major implications across the IT management, monitoring, automation, mobile and security software markets.
> Updated July 11, 2018: Broadcom Acquiring CA Technologies for $18 Billion?
Within the IT services industry, midmarket MSPs leverage CA's Unified Infrastructure Management software for various IT management and monitoring capabilities. The deal would also have some product overlap. Both BMC and CA promote mature application performance monitoring (APM) software, though web-scale upstarts like AppDynamics (acquired by Cisco), Datadog and New Relic have been growing rapidly lately.
CA shares rose roughly 17 percent on Tuesday amid deal speculation. The company is now valued at $13.29 billion.
CA Technologies: Past, Present... Future?
CA gained prominence as a mainframe software provider in the 1980s, attempted to pivot for client-server in the 1990s, but was plagued by an accounting scandal in the 2004 timeframe. The company also has a mixed history in the IT channel, sometimes leaning too heavily on direct sales to win partner loyalty.
CA CEO Michael Gregoire (pictured above) has been striving to modernize the software company since arriving in 2013. The effort has included self-service applications that customers can finally consume by the sip -- rather than signing long-term licensing deals. Also, Gregoire's team has shown channel progress in recent years -- particularly with midmarket IT service providers.
BMC's owners -- Bain Capital and Golden Gate Capital -- may put in new equity to help finance the potential CA acquisition, Bloomberg reported. However, there's no guarantee a deal will happen and negotiations are in there early stages, the report said. None of the companies commented for Bloomberg.
Private Equity and IT Management Software
Private equity firms have been particularly activity in the IT management and monitoring software market. Silver Lake and Thoma Bravo acquired SolarWinds and took the company private in 2016. And Thoma Bravo acquired Continuum last week for its MSP-oriented software, automation and IT outsourcing services in the SMB sector.
In the SMB and MSP software sector, Autotask and Kaseya also have private equity ownership.
