CA buys systems monitoring firm Nimsoft

CA is making aggressive moves into the cloud computing market

CA has signed a definitive agreement to acquire monitoring systems provider Nimsoft for $350m (£232m), as the company looks to improve its position in the cloud and virtualisation marketplaces.

CA said that the purchase will allow it take advantage of new ways of doing business, and that it will target the resulting offerings at organisations with annual revenues of $300m (£200m) to $2bn (£1.3bn).

"With our planned acquisition of Nimsoft, CA will be equipped to capture several important growth market segments, including emerging enterprises, emerging national economies, and the managed service providers that provide these customers with IT management services via the cloud," said Chris O'Malley, executive vice president for cloud products and the solutions business line at CA.

"Penetration of these markets will further expand our global leadership in IT management, and complement our existing strength with large enterprise customers."

Nimsoft also provides enterprise tools for monitoring and reporting on software-as-a-service offerings such as Google Apps for Business, Rackspace and Amazon's cloud offerings, and Salesforce customer relationship management packages.

"CA and Nimsoft are a perfect match. We are joining a company that wrote the book on enterprise management," said Gary Read, Nimsoft president and chief executive, who will be joining CA.

"We are bringing a very strong track record of success in the hosted and managed services segment and with mid-market enterprises. CA clearly shares our commitment to address customers' evolving requirements for the management of their IT systems, including their move to virtualisation and the cloud."

CA said that the "majority" of Nimsoft employees would join its ranks, and that it expects to close the deal by the end of spring.