Are any of your biggest customers worried about losing Mercury products or that an independent company will be gone? What's the general reaction been? I met with five different major customers after the announcement last week, and they were all thrilled for several reasons. First, HP is a brand known and highly recognizable and very valued around world,. Combine that with HP's reach, investment capability, continued investment in software through acquisitions and the $4.5 billion acquisition of Mercury, and that was a big, big statement.

Mercury is formidable in the business technology optimization [BTO] realm, has testing prowess and IT governance capability. When you combine that with the richness and depth that HP has with IT service management and network management and OpenView products, you get pretty much an incomparable set in the market. No vendor offers that portfolio in the market. And senior executives want to do business with fewer vendors, rather than more. Some customers may not be happy with the purchase. I'm sure it's not unanimous, but there was a resounding thumbs-up.

Some thought a big part of the reason HP bought Mercury was to get at some intellectual property Mercury might have in the service-oriented architecture management area. Was it? That would be a big check to write to get at SOA technology, although the purchase includes that capability. It's to get BTO and everything from our testing tools to our SOA registries. Also, HP had a thriving relationship with Systinet, which provides SOA governance software. But Mercury acquired Systinet in January for $105 million. HP gets the whole product portfolio and market position and selling channel and technology work force.

So SOA tools are growing in importance. But you are still very big in testing software, with about 60 percent of Mercury revenues there? Yes, 60 percent is from testing, down from 80 percent in revenues from testing tools a year ago. So it's still a thriving market, but we're moving more to applications management, IT governance and SOA governance -- and we think that shift will continue with the highest growth in application management, SOA and IT governance and change management software. You always want to look through the windshield and look where the market opportunities are.

Is HP hoping for access to the Mercury customer base to sell its own products? Not really. That's secondary.