News
Quest Reveals Which Products Survive Aelita Acquisition
- By Scott Bekker
- 05/19/2004
Quest Software this week unveiled the inevitable aftermath of its acquisition of Aelita Software -- which products from the two companies' similar portfolios of Windows software have a future and which didn't make the cut.
The product rationalization was the first major task at Quest for Ratmir Timashev, the former Aelita boss and now the senior vice president and general manager of the Windows Management group at Quest. Timashev finished the job less than four months after the late January announcement of the $115 million acquisition.
"Our combined organization has more than 8,000 customers worldwide, and all our product rationalization decisions took their needs and interests into account first and foremost," Timashev said in a statement.
The Windows Management group is one of three main Quest divisions. Quest executives hope organic and acquisition-boosted growth in that business unit will bring it up to a third of Quest revenues by year-end.
The results of the process appear to bear out Quest executives' comments in January that little overlap existed between the former competitors' product sets. Four products are being discontinued -- three from Aelita and one from Quest -- while 20 products are moving forward. Survivors include 12 Quest products and eight former Aelita offerings, which have been rebranded.
The losers are Aelita Enterprise Directory Reporter, Aelita Consolidation Manager, the Aelita Self-Serve Password Reset module and Quest ActiveRestore. In the case of all discontinued products, customers with current maintenance contracts will receive the surviving product for no additional cost.
Sales and development of Aelita Enterprise Directory Reporter will be discontinued in favor of Quest Reporter. Support for Aelita Enterprise Directory Reporter will last until the end of 2005. Aelita Consolidation Manager will give way to Quest Consolidator. Support for the Aelita product will last until the end of 2004. Quest Password Reset Manager will carry forward in place of the Aelita Self-Serve Password Reset module, which will lose support Dec. 31.
Quest ActiveRestore will be discontinued as of June 30 in favor of the former Aelita Recovery Manager for Active Directory.
Quest released a white paper detailing its product rationalization process and laying out its Windows management strategy. It is available here.
About the Author
Scott Bekker is editor in chief of Redmond Channel Partner magazine.