Hewlett-Packard has agreed to buy AppIQ, a privately held storage management software company today. The merger will unite the privately held technology leader in storage area network (SAN) management and storage resource management (SRM) software with one of the world's largest technology companies. The acquisition is expected to be completed in the fourth quarter of 2005, subject to regulatory approvals. Financial terms of the transaction are not being disclosed. AppIQ and HP share a common vision for IT infrastructure management. Both companies believe that a multi-vendor command and control platform for storage infrastructure is a must-have solution for any Adaptive Enterprise that needs to control data center costs, meet service levels, and synchronize IT resources with business needs. HP and AppIQ also share a common culture of innovation around standards and a partner-centric business model. "Since its inception, AppIQ has been focused on becoming the de facto standard for managing data storage infrastructure, and we have created tremendous value in our company as a result of our strong execution, innovative technology, OEM partnerships, and customer momentum," said Dave Lemont, CEO, AppIQ. "As a result of this merger, AppIQ will have access to the resources we need to accelerate our vision, bring more advanced solutions to market faster, and better serve the needs of our customers and OEM partners." Key to AppIQ's emergence as one of the fastest-growing software companies in the storage industry is the company's strategic OEM and joint development relationships. HP offers AppIQ's family of storage area management software today as HP Storage Essentials, under the terms of an OEM agreement announced in March. Engenio Information Technologies, Hitachi Data Systems, SGI, and Sun Microsystems also offer AppIQ StorageAuthority Suite or a subset of AppIQ's flagship management family under strategic OEM agreements. HP has strong storage relationships with Hitachi, the OEM manufacturer of the HP StorageWorks XP series of disk arrays, and Sun, the OEM manufacturer, via its recent acquisition of StorageTek, of the HP StorageWorks Enterprise Modular Library (EML). "Our strategic relationship with AppIQ allowed us to observe the quality of the company's employees and technology firsthand, so we have a lot of confidence that AppIQ will fit well within HP's business and culture," said Bob Schultz, senior vice president and general manager, StorageWorks, HP. "In addition to complementing our storage business, AppIQ's technology will play a strategic role in HP's server, software and services businesses. HP is looking forward to continuing the broad industry support that AppIQ has created and enjoyed."