Mercury races into SOA market through acquisition

Mercury Interactive has signed an agreement to acquire Systinet, a provider of software for the governance and management of service-oriented architecture.

Mercury believes its business technology optimization products, BTO Enterprise, combined with Systinet's technology will become part of a life cycle approach for customers to make the most of SOA business services.

Mercury agreed to pay $105 million in cash for the privately held Systinet.

“We believe the combination of Mercury and Systinet will immediately position us as a leader in the high-growth SOA market,” said Tony Zingale, Mercury’s chief executive officer. “Systinet’s technology and deep expertise in SOA combined with Mercury’s strong BTO market leadership introduces powerful product synergies and the ability to address a broader set of customer opportunities in the fast-growing SOA market.”

SOA is an enterprise architecture approach that loosely links various software-based services using middleware technology.

The companies expect the transaction to close during the first quarter of 2006. The agreement was announced Jan. 9.