ON A SUCCESSFUL EXIT FOR OPSWARE/LOUDCLOUD

ALL'S WELL THAT...

It was great to see this headline on Marc Andreessen's blog this morning:

"HP buys my company Opsware for more than $1.6 billion in cash"

I've had the opportunity to know and work with the company since it's inception in 1999 as LoudCloud.  And I've been an early believer in the opportunity for managed services companies in the first commercialization phase of the internet.

But it's not been an easy road for any of the participants.

Like many of it's peers, Opware/LoudCloud, has gone through some of the biggest storms in internet industry, along with some hard resets and transformations.  Marc provides a detailed background on all this in his post.

But the company did manage the following accomplishment, amongst many others.  As Marc notes:

"One of my favorite facts about this deal is that at our acquisition price of $14.25 per share, everyone who bought and held stock in Loudcloud or Opsware in the public market at any time made money."

That's a really cool thing to be able to say.

My congratulations to Marc, his co-founders Ben Horowitz and Tim Howes, and the rest of the Opsware/LoudCloud team, for steering the ship through some pretty rough waters, and bringing it to port.

Best wishes to them going forward.

I also look forward to following Opsware's new voyages as a part of HP.

The managed services industry has gone through it's version 1.0 phase over the past decade.

We're just getting started on version 2.0.

Comments

[Jason Wood]

Michael,

While it's poetic for Marc to say that, the truth, as you know, is that quite a few shareholders likely got out with losses. The blessing and curse of public equity is that you can buy AND sell it, and certainly given Loudcloud/Opsware's long trading history, there were plenty of people that would cringe from Marc's tout.

Either way, this certainly proves yet again that HP is a) serious about building its software infrastructure presence and b) is willing to pay aggressive multiples for assets it views strategically.