The Great Hyperic Debate: Is Company Sale Success or Failure?

The VAR Guy is enjoying some healthy industry debate. By now, you likely know that SpringSource acquired Hyperic, an open source systems management company. But the real fun started when Nimsoft CEO Gary Read offered his opinion on the deal.

First, a little background: It’s difficult to measure Hyperic’s success over the years, since the open source company was privately held. Hyperic certainly had its share of customers — including Contegix, a managed hosting provider that raved about Hyperic’s software.

On May 4, Springsource acquired “substantially all of the assets of Hyperic.” Hmmm. What was the valuation? Hmmm. Difficult to say.

The VAR Guy was looking for some unique perspectives about the deal.  That’s when our resident blogger stumbled onto opinions from Gary Read, CEO of Nimsoft.

In a May 4 blog entry titled “No surprise – Hyperic fails!,” Read wrote:

And then the reader comments started flowing in.

A Question of Debate

Did Hyperic really fail? Hmmm. That assertion from Read seems to be based on circumstantial evidence rather than hard evidence. But Read is an outspoken, fast-thinking CEO who often shares his thoughts before his marketing and PR teams can find the time to censor him.

What does The VAR Guy believe? He does find it intriguing that Springsource and Hyperic were funded by Benchmark Capital, though Hyperic denies that Benchmark was involved in the deal, according to this Linux Journal article.

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