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Broadcom buying CA, Brilliant or a Brainbuster?

Broadcom buying CA, Brilliant or a Brainbuster?

Broadcom buying CA, Brilliant or a Brain buster?

For some in the IT industry as well as financial markets, there is skepticism about Broadcom (formerly known as Avago) making an announcing that they are buying CA Technologies (CA) for USD 18.9 Billion (cash). For example, the Broadcom stock ( AVGO) took a significant negative hit (13%) on the news.

Broadcom Stock impact after announcing CA purchase
Broadcom Stock upon announcing buying CA (via Google)

Broadcom aka Avago and CA rewind

Why the backlash over buying CA? a couple of reasons, CA is not exactly the most loved software vendor by customers in the industry, and, Broadcom (Avago) has been traditionally focused on hardware.

However, to understand this better, lets take a step back.

After digesting the likes of Broadcom, Brocade, and LSI among others, as well as after failing to capture Qualcomm in a USD 117 Billion takeover attempt, Avago (e.g., Broadcom) has set its sights on Mainframe and legacy enterprise software vendor Computer Technologies (CA) formerly known as Computer Associates. CA has about USD 4.2 Billion in annual revenue with about two-thirds tied to legacy IBM mainframe software, and the rest in other enterprise software. While not a growth segment, the IBM mainframe software business is a good annuity revenue and margin stream.

Data Infrastructures
Data Infrastructures support IT business applications

Broadcom had 2017 revenues of about USD 17.6 Billion made up of a diverse product set including data infrastructure hardware along with associated software spanning legacy to new and emerging cloud environments. Some of Broadcom technologies include server I/O devices such as PCIe, SAS, SATA and NVMe adapters, RAID controllers and chips, Fibre Channel, NVMe over Fabric (NVMeoF), Ethernet, switches and much more.
Broadcom and CA, Brainbuster or Brilliant?

This deal is a bit of a head-scratcher or brainbuster on the surface as Broadcom aka Avago has been primarily a hardware company (they do have a portfolio of drivers, management tools, monitoring and other software) and I can understand them wanting to get more into the software business.

Avago (excuse me, Broadcom) has had a focus on leaning out acquisitions to drive volume and integration across its portfolio, bringing value to its partners and customers. For its part, CA has been known where old (or new) software goes to die or retire garnering CA reputations as a software retirement home, or undertaker for technology. Refer to the Broadcom SEC filing for more information here.

On the other hand, CA has made a successful business wringing our value from existing software as opposed to substantial investment in new development; they do do some new development.

Perhaps this is the risk and reward that Avago sees, where similar to themselves of wringing out value from existing hardware, maybe they will do the same with CA, however, taking it to a new level. If that is the game, then once CA is bought by Broadcom, who will they pursue from a software acquisition target list similar to what Avago has done with hardware?

Where to learn more

Learn more about Broadcom (Avago), CA and data infrastructures related topics via the following links:

Additional learning experiences along with common questions (and answers), as well as tips can be found in Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials book.

Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials Book SDDC

What this all means

For now, Broadcom buying CA is a brainbuster, especially on the surface. However, there could be a brilliant move if Broadcom can leverage CA to do what it has done in the past. That is, similar to Avago buying various companies and leaning them out; CA has done similar with both boosting recurring revenues and increasing market footprint. Also, the combined companies can also leverage their reach into various partner ecosystems as keep in mind, hardware needs software, software needs hardware, and Broadcom is now a supplier of both.

It will be interesting to see how much Broadcom leans out CA, perhaps the lessons from buying Brocade might help as opposed to previous purchases. My point is that Brocade solutions are higher up the data infrastructure technology stack than traditional Broadcom, Avago, LSI components that require more direct customer-facing sales and marketing.

CA for its part also relies on direct customer-facing sales and marketing, however, is their room or opportunity for leaning things out?

Something else interesting to watch is how much Broadcom allows CA to operate on its own, vs. more under the direct Broadcom umbrella.

Then there is the question of to sustain growth, does Broadcom and CA go on additional shopping sprees for undervalued software companies and whom would those be? Perhaps some of the legacy big vendors such as Cisco, Dell Technologies, HPE, IBM, Oracle among others might be interested in selling off some under performing software.

On the other hand, perhaps there are some opportunities for Broadcom and CA to do some buy out deals with private equity firms?

Keep in mind that over the past few years, several software business units have been divested from the likes of the combined Dell and EMC, HPE among others.

For now, I’m sticking with Broadcom buying CA as a brainbuster, however, see some interesting scenarios in the future.

Ok, nuff said, for now.

Cheers Gs

Greg Schulz – Microsoft MVP Cloud and Data Center Management, VMware vExpert 2010-2018. Author of Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials (CRC Press), as well as Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press), Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier) and twitter @storageio. Courteous comments are welcome for consideration. First published on https://storageioblog.com any reproduction in whole, in part, with changes to content, without source attribution under title or without permission is forbidden.

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Kudos to HP CEO Mark Hurd for dignity to step down from his post

Yesterday (Friday) late afternoon, HP announced (or read here) that their CEO Mark Hurd was resigning due to improprieties uncovered during an internal investigation.

HP is far from being alone in the corporate world involving investigations, lawsuits by governments or allegations of bribes and impropriety.

However what stands out is that of the CEO stepping down.

While not unique, after all remember the former CA CEO Sanjay Kumar who was locked up, or former Brocade CEO Greg Reyes now stepping into new government provided accommodations due to illegal activities, not to mention those from Enron among others. Granted in those situations there were legal ramifications outside of the companies prompting the courts to get involved, something that looks like for now is not the case at HP. However, having the courts get involved with corporate activity is almost becoming a pattern of how business is done. For example, there is a whos who list (e.g.Cisco, Dell, EMC, IBM, Intel, or Oracle among others) of IT companies involved in (or recently settled) various government or financial dealing cases associated with bribes, kickbacks or other business improprieties reminiscent of Rodney Dangerfield character Thornton Melon explaining how business is conducted in the real world during Dr Phillip Barbay business class in Back to School.

Lets get back to and focus on the individual, that is Mr Hurd and what I think is something rare these days. That is a CEO or leader of a company or organization seriously taking responsibility for their actions or those that they are responsible for instead of lip service and spin doctoring.

I do not know whether Mr Hurd decided on his own or it was suggested to him that he step down from his post. However what I do know simply based on the story that has been put out by HP is that Mr Hurd either has, or is being portrayed as taking the high road of stepping down. That is, as the head of the HP organization, he is taking responsibility for actions, not looking for special status or exceptions and stepping down from his post instead of trying to sweep the dust or dirt under the rug. Thus Kudos to Mr Hurd for taking responsibility, not hiding, spinning or throwing someone else under the proverbial corporate politics bus to save his own hide.As the CEO of a major corporation the buck stops with him and he should not be above the law or polices of his own organizations that other employees would be expected to follow.

Too often today we hear stories of company or organization or government leaders getting or expecting special treatment in some cases not taking full and complete responsibility for their actions other than for a photo opportunity.

On a different yet related note, perhaps my thinking will change as more comes out on the story as well as they story behind the story, however this is an interesting example of how crisis management can be dealt with. Sure the story was released on a Friday afternoon which is typically when bad news is put out after the financial markets have closed. On the other hand, given the nature of HP being a tech company and with web, blogs, twitter, face book and other social media the chatter was significant for a late Friday afternoon.

Lets see how this plays out and if HP along with their PR crisis team played the right cards by getting the story out, CEO Mark Hurd stepping down to avoid prolonging the situations as well as how wall street will react short term and over the long haul.

This leaves me with a closing thought of if politicians from all sides (or across both sides of aisle or parties) did what HP CEO Mark Hurd did (resign) due to impropriety, we would have fewer elected officials. Thus I do not think Mr Hurd has a future in government politics not because of what he did that caused his stepping down at HP.

No, rather because either on his own or under advice of others he decided not to look for or seek special favor or cover up of what was done as well as try not to spin the story thus saving both him and his company (HP) for the long term.

Nuff said for now.

Cheers gs

Greg Schulz – Author The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC) and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier)
twitter @storageio