CA follows Wily buy with yet another purchase

Days after swooping on management software firm Wily, CA has bought Control-F1 for its support tools

Continuing its merger-hungry tradition, CA today snapped up privately held IT service management specialist Control-F1.

CA said the cash purchase forms part of its Enterprise IT Management strategy, aimed at streamlining the management of technology systems. It gives the software vendor support and helpdesk automation tools that are designed to automatically detect and repair computer problems before they are able to disrupt critical IT services.

The acquisition will also help enterprises improve helpdesk productivity, said CA, partly through the provision of more self-healing IT environments.

Jacob Lamm, senior vice-president of CA’s Business Service Optimisation (BSO) unit, said that the combination of CA’s service management products and Control-F1’s automation solutions would help relieve the daily workloads of IT departments so they can focus on more strategic projects.

While Control-F1 products will continue to be sold as standalone offerings, CA also plans to incorporate them into its BSO portfolio. Control-F1’s tools already interoperate with Unicenter Service Management, CA added.

The purchase adds to an array of recent CA acquisition activity. Earlier this month, the firm agreed a $375m deal to buy enterprise application management firm Wily Technologies, while among last year’s acquisitions were network service management vendor Concord Communications and IT management specialist Niku.