Hewlett-Packard has announced that it has acquired control of Autonomy Corp. Holders of over 200 million Autonomy shares have accepted HP’s previously announced offer to purchase the entire share capital of Autonomy at a price of £25.50 per share ($34.81, €26.08) in cash, representing approximately 87.34% of the current issued share capital of Autonomy. As such, all conditions relating to the offer have now been satisfied, allowing HP to acquire control of Autonomy.

The acquisition positions HP as a leader in the large and growing enterprise information management space. Autonomy’s software offerings power more than 25 000 customer accounts worldwide and, as part of HP, will provide high-value business solutions to help customers manage the explosion of unstructured and structured information. Autonomy offers solutions that are complementary across HP’s enterprise offerings and strengthens the company’s data analytics, cloud, industry and workflow management capabilities. Despite of new opportunities with Autonomy, many observers and investors criticized HP for the move.

“We are committed to helping our customers solve their toughest IT challenges. The exploding growth of unstructured and structured data and unlocking its value is the single largest opportunity for consumers, businesses and governments. Autonomy significantly increases our capabilities to manage and extract meaning from that data to drive insight, foresight and better decision making,” said Meg Whitman, HP president and chief executive officer.

As previously announced, Autonomy will operate as a separate business unit. Dr. Mike Lynch, the founder and chief executive officer of Autonomy, will continue to lead the Autonomy business and will report to Ms. Whitman.

“This is a historic day for Autonomy, our employees and the customers we serve, as we combine HP’s phenomenal assets and Autonomy’s specialized skills to produce systems that handle all the information in the enterprise, regardless of the format it is in. We are at the dawn of a new era when it is the ‘I’ in IT that is changing, not just the ‘T’,” said Mr. Lynch.

HP’s offer to purchase the remaining Autonomy shares remains open.

Tags: HP, Autonomy, Hewlett-Packard, Business