CA buying California IT company; fifth deal in year

The Islandia-based software company CA Inc. has agreed to buy privately held Nimsoft Inc. for $350 million in cash, marking its fifth acquisition in the past year.

CA said in a news release that Nimsoft will complement its existing range of cloud-computing services.

Nimsoft is "a leading provider of IT performance and availability monitoring solutions for emerging enterprises and managed service providers," which are both important facets of the cloud-computing service model, CA said.

Cloud computing refers to flexible, cost-saving subscription plans allowing clients to use - and pay for - variable amounts of data storage, software and other resources on the Internet, as needed.

The purchase of the Redwood City, Calif.-based Nimsoft also helps open a new market for CA.

It extends CA's reach into a pool of smaller businesses with revenues in the $300 million to $2 billion range, a category known as emerging enterprises.

CA usually sells to businesses with annual revenues in excess of $2 billion. By 2013 the emerging enterprises category could account for about one-fourth of CA's target clientele.

The transaction follows CA's purchases of Cassatt, NetQoS and Oblicore; and last month's announcement that it plans to buy 3Tera.

"With our planned acquisition of Nimsoft, CA will be equipped to capture several important growth market segments - including emerging enterprises, emerging national economies, and the MSPs [managed service providers] who are providing these customers with IT management services via the cloud," Chris O'Malley, a CA executive vice president, said in a news release.