Will HP Buy Autonomy?

Migrated from eDJGroupInc.com. Author: Barry Murphy. Published: 2011-08-18 13:33:49  I saw a report today that HP will make a $10 billion bid for Autonomy.  If true, it’s major news.  We’ve always known that the software giants covet the information governance market (of which eDiscovery is a major component).  But, none have made truly significant purchases yet.  There have been signs, though, that the big guys take eDiscovery seriously.  IBM did pick up PSS Systems and Google did just hire a respected industry veteran – Jack Halprin – to head up an eDiscovery offering.  If HP buys Autonomy, it will put IBM, EMC, Microsoft, Oracle, and even SAP on the spot.  It doesn’t necessarily mean that those companies need to buy market contenders now; rather, they must move their strategies forward rapidly so that they can pick their winners within the next year.The rumor for years has been that Oracle would buy Autonomy, so even if HP makes a bid, it could just be the start of a bidding war.  Autonomy has a wide breadth of information governance products and it has a core search engine that others salivate for, especially as we move into a time where automated classification and content analytics gain traction and defensibility.  IBM has a lot of this technology in-house already, so I don’t expect Big Blue to get into the bidding war.  However, IBM might start to look more closely at eDiscovery applications in the market that it could add to its portfolio.The other consideration here is the cloud.  With Autonomy, HP could be getting a major cloud provider and that could help push HP’s own cloud strategy.  The giants all have cloud ambitions, so this move could accelerate cloud strategies, as well.Consolidation is not bad news for this market.  There are still a lot of viable, small vendors in the space that can make a market impact.  In fact, HP buying Autonomy could open opportunities for smaller vendors to take some Autonomy accounts that may want to switch for fear of lock-in to other HP products lines.That’s my 2 minute analysis.  More on this as news breaks.  What do you think?  Comment here.