Computer Associates International Inc., the giant software management vendor, and Niku Corp., an IT management and governance solution vendor, announced a deal to integrate products from both companies.

As part of the deal CA will resell, service, and support Niku"s Clarity project and portfolio management application.

In the initial stage the Niku products will be integrated with CA"s Unicenter service management and its AllFusion lifecycle management solutions at only a customer or field level. However, further integration of the products is expected.

"Over the next 60 to 90 days, you will see the first productized versions of an integrated solution," said Joshua Pickus, CEO and president of Niku.

The synergy between the two companies is based on the massive amount of data collected by CA applications on how software, servers, and networks are performing, which can feed into Niku"s IT governance solution.

"Once you pull all the pieces together and take the quantitative data, lifecycle, test management, operational systems, you can make it available for qualitative analysis," said Melinda-Carol Ballou, senior research analyst, technology research services at Meta Group.

Ballou also said most companies do not understand the linkages between IT assets and project portfolios and its impact on planning projects.

According to Sharie Shore, vice president of marketing at CA, when an application performs poorly it may be because IT hasn"t installed numerous patches sent by the vendor. Using Niku management solution, IT managers can decide whether or not the application is worth fixing.

CA is currently deploying and supporting the Niku applications on a limited basis and will begin full support in March.