We are going to have to wait an awful long time to discover whether Micro Focus International’s $8.8 billion purchase of Hewlett Packard’s software business is indeed a transformational deal or the overambitious culmination of a long run of successful acquisitions. The deal is not due to close until the third quarter of next year, so the first indications of success or otherwise will not be manifest until 2018.
In the meantime we will just have to make do with the deals Micro Focus has done so far, such as the $540 million purchase of Serena Software in May and other, smaller ones — the company’s belief is that as software products mature and growth slows, they are better aggregated under one roof, where