Meg Whitman - HPE president and CEO
The spin-off and merger of Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s (HPE) software business and fellow software vendor, Micro Focus, is set to hit today.
Micro Focus, which is headquartered in the United Kingdom and publicly listed on the London Stock Exchange, plans to list on the New York Stock Exchange from 1 September (North American time), as it closes the spin-merger deal.
The US$8.8 billion deal to spin-off and merge HPE’s software business with Micro Focus was announced late last year, with HPE set to retain ownership of 50.1 per cent in the post-merged entity.
Included in the bundle that has been offloaded are HPE’s businesses focusing on application delivery management, big data, enterprise security, information management and governance, and IT operations management.
The merger with Micro Focus, which acquired Attachmate in 2014 and owns Linux company, SUSE, the HPE software business merger is set to create one of the world’s largest pure-play software companies, according to HPE, with a combined sales force of about 4000 people.
At the time of the announcement, HPE and Micro Focus also revealed plans for a commercial partnership that will name SUSE as HPE's preferred Linux partner, and will bring together HPE's Helion OpenStack and Stackato solutions with SUSE's OpenStack expertise to provide best-in-class enterprise-grade hybrid cloud offerings for HPE customers.
“Micro Focus expects to improve the margin on HPE's software assets by approximately 20 percentage points by the end of the third full financial year following the closing of the transaction, while also investing in key growth areas like big data and security,” HPE said at the time.
The completion of the planned spin-merger of the businesses has long been targeted for 1 September (North American time).
The combined company is set to be led by Micro Focus executive chairman, Kevin Loosemore.
"The time is right for consolidation in the infrastructure software market and this proposed merger will create one of the leading players in this space," Loosemore said at the time. "The combined organisation will benefit from strong positions in a number of key segments, further enhancing our customers' ability to leverage both prior and new IT investments to exploit the latest industry innovations such as mobility, cloud, the internet of things, big data and analytics.
“The transaction reinforces Micro Focus' established acquisition strategy and our focus on long term customer value through the disciplined and efficient management of mature infrastructure software products,” he said.
The spin-merger completion date comes just weeks after HPE announced that its board of directors set the close of its software business on August 21, 2017, as the record date for the proposed spin-off of Seattle SpinCo, which will hold HPE’s software business.
In May, HPE Australia moved to transition roughly 87 employees from its local software business unit to an entity, called Entco Australia, which is understood to have been set up as part of the spin-merger process. It is understood that, by June, the transition had been completed.
Also closer to home, the closure of the multibillion-dollar deal will see the new company's leaders hit the road on a ‘Discover the New Micro Focus Tour’ to meet with key customers and partners in the local market.
Indeed, Loosemore himself will be on hand to deliver the keynote at the Sydney event on 11 September.
