With the launch ALM (Application Lifecycle Management) 11, HP hinted to industry  players of its seriousness in building a stronghold in the software industry. Launched at the HP Universe event, ALM 11 embodies over two years of R&D, says HP executive vice president for Software and Solutions organization Bill Veghete, who is also a former executive at Microsoft, having served the company for almost 20 years.

“The need for innovation and agility is key for applications today, and we think the releases we are doing—from Quality Center to ALM 11—are the right way,” Veghte told eWEEK. “Our new ALM solution is platform- and IDE [integrated development environment]-agnostic.”

Veghete added that ALM 11 delivers an architecture designed to accelerate the reliable, secure delivery of applications and services. The platform automates application modernization— from requirements management through quality and performance.

“The competition in the ALM space has started to heat up over the last year,” said Dave West, an analyst with Forrester Research. “This HP release is essentially an announcement around the Mercury tools that came into HP through an acquisition four years ago.”

Mercury Software was acquired by HP last 2006 for $4.5 billion, with hopes of $2 billion in annual returns.  HP’s Openview systems, network and IT service management software is a match to Mercury’s strength in application management, application delivery, IT governance and service-oriented architecture governance. HP has surpassed their goals when its Software and Solution unit went up to $3.6 billion, and the ALM 11 has proven a huge success.

A Forrester study organized by HP showed that 69% of IT decision-makers will allocate 25% of their annual budget to application modernization, while 30% says they will earmark over 50%.

HP is primarily a hardware manufacturer, and  incorporating more cloud-based services is a way for them to serve more of their client needs, and generate more revenue. This takes them into the realm of Oracle.  IBM has been making a similar transition as well.