CA closes deal to buy Miramar Systems

Computer Associates Thursday announced it had made final the all-cash deal to purchase Miramar Systems, known best for its desktop migration products.

CA says the technology, already in use with CA’s Unicenter Software Distribution, will be incorporated across CA’s brands in the coming months. In November, IDC named CA the software distribution market leader, with 14.7% share.

Miramar’s flagship product, Desktop DNA, captures the software running on an end user desktop, including software versions, applications and personal favorites, and automates moving that information to new machines. It works with CA’s Software Distribution product in that it can provide an exact image or snapshot of the machine and make moving it over to a new system less manual and prone to error, CA says.

“The DNA technology can spot the personality of machines and highlight the differences among them,” says Allen Andersen, director of product management for CA’s Unicenter brand. “It stores information that other products don’t and it makes it easier to move from one system to another without starting from scratch.”

CA executives say Miramar’s core technology will also be included in BrightStor backup and recovery products and eTrust identity management and vulnerability scanning tools. For example, if a laptop is lost or stolen, Desktop DNA technology could automatically resurrect the end user’s working environment on a new machine. Lost files could also be restored with less of a hassle using the DNA software, Andersen says.

The financial details of the cash deal were not disclosed, and CA will migrate the 30 or so employees in Miramar’s Santa Barbara headquarters to CA’s offices in neighboring Goleta, Calif. CA says Miramar Desktop DNA software, through reseller and OEM agreements, is used to maintain and migrate 100,000 desktops today.