Ford is excited about the expansion of the group and initiatives are already underway to extend services to Mercury users.

For example, the keynote at this week's OVFI virtual tradeshow is on Mercury products and plans are underway to stage a combined event for HP and Mercury users in Australia in early 2007.

Ford said OVFI is helping HP stage HP Software Universe (Asia Pacific) in Brisbane from March 5-9, 2007.

The event will examine business technology optimization (BTO) and the expanded HP software portfolio.

Mercury has an estimated 14,000 customers worldwide while HP OpenView has about 15,000 users.