Acquisition of the Week

CA today announced its intentions to acquire portfolio management vendor Niku
Portfolio management, more recently coined IT Governance, has been growing as a concern for the past year. Compuware acquired Changepoint Corporation, winner of our 2004 Well Connected Award for Portfolio Management and top scorer in our review of ITPM products and recently integrated it more thoroughly into its own set of management solutions. We anciticipate that CA, with its broad portolio of management products, will walk the same path with Niku.
IT Governance solutions are designed to manage project life cycles and assist IT and line of business managers in aligning IT projects with the business by organizing, prioritizing and scoring projects based on traditional IT factors such as resource availability and cost as well as more nebulous criteria such as business value and alignment with corporate strategy.
CA indicates that Niku's IT management and governance solutions will be integrated with CA's Business Service Optimization (BSO) unit, headed by Senior Vice President and General Manager Jacob Lamm. The acquisition is expected to be completed within three months, pending regulatory approval and the approval of Niku's shareholders.