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'HP Mercury' (formerly Mercury Interactive) is a subsidiary of Hewlett-Packard that is a market leader in automated software quality assurance and offers products in other areas such as diagnostics, monitoring, and IT governance. Mercury was founded in 1989 and is based in Mountain View, California. It holds its largest R&D facility in Yehud, Israel, and has many offices around the world. On July 25, 2006 Hewlett-Packard announced that it would pay $4.5 billion to acquire Mercury, offering to pay $52 a share which was a 33 percent premium over its close of $39 a share on the day of the announcement. Mercury became part of HP as of November 7th, 2006.

Contents

Corporate malfeasance

Products

Competitors

External links

References

Corporate malfeasance

From 4 January, 2006, until its purchase by Hewlett-Packard, Mercury was traded via Pink Sheets as a result of being delisted from the NASDAQ due to noncompliance with filing requirements. This situation occurred as a result of Mercury having to restate financial results due to improprieties by executive management regarding stock options backdating. The executive officers who precipitated the delisting, Chief Executive Officer Amnon Landan, Chief Financial Officer Douglas Smith, and General Counsel Susan Skaer, resigned on November 2, 2005 when it became known that these officers were aware of, and participated in, the manipulation of stock options purchase dates on 49 occasions between 1995 and 2004. In addition to these manipulations, the Chief Executive Officer, Amnon Landan, misreported personal stock option exercise dates to increase his profit on transactions three times between 1998 and 2001. Other improprieties on Amnon Landan's part include a 1 million dollar personal loan in 1999, which was not authorized by the board of directors, and was not clearly disclosed in the company's filings with the SEC. The SEC initiated legal proceedings against Landan in 2007. The company is under new management.

Products

★ WinRunner is a functional GUI testing tool.

★ QuickTest Professional (QTP) is a functional GUI testing tool.

★ LoadRunner is a load testing tool.

★ Performance Center is an enterprise-class application for performance testing manageable via the web.

★ TestDirector for Quality Center is a management tool for all aspects of software testing, ranging from capturing requirements, storing test scripts, test execution and defect management.

★ Business Technology Optimization is a new tool built to aid the business philosophy of managing IT resources as a business rather than as a service bureau.

★ Business Availability Center is an end-user experience monitoring tool.

★ SiteScope is an Agent-less Systems Monitoring tool.

★ Mercury Application Mapping is a systems' mapping tool.

★ Mercury IT Governance (ITG) is an IT Governance and Project Portfolio Management (PPM)tool.

★ Mercury Global Monitor (formerly Topaz Monitor)[1]

Competitors

Quality Assurance

★ BBLsolutions - (CompassTMS)

★ Borland (acquired Segue - SilkTest, SilkPerformer)

★ Compuware (TestPartner, QACenter, QALoad)

★ Facilita (Forecast Studio)

★ IBM (acquired Rational - IBM Rational Functional Tester)

★ RadView - (WebLOAD)

★ OpenDemand - (OpenLoad)

★ Opsware

★ Scapa Technologies The Scapa Test and Performance Platform
IT Governance / ITIL / ITSM

★ CA Clarity (acquired Niku)

★ Compuware (acquired ChangePoint)

★ Newmerix

★ Opsware

★ Primavera

★ Quest Software
Monitoring and Diagnostics

★ BMC (Patrol)

★ CA (Unicenter, acquired Wily Technology - Introscope, JProbe)

★ Compuware (Vantage)

★ IBM (Tivoli)

★ Opsware

★ Scapa Technologies The Scapa Test and Performance Platform

External links

★ Mercury's website

★ Landan's Nemesis. A well-written article about the recent scandal at Mercury, gives valuable background and some important historic information

★ Globes online - Amnon Landan steps down from Mercury CEO post

★ The New York Times - HP to Pay $4.5 Billion to Acquire Mercury

References

# TheStreet.Com