Autonomy Corporation
Autonomy is a multinational enterprise software company with joint headquarters in Cambridge, United Kingdom, and San Francisco, USA and a subsidiary of Hewlett-Packard. The company uses a combination of technologies born out of research at the University of Cambridge. It develops a variety of enterprise search and knowledge management applications using adaptive pattern recognition techniques centered on Bayesian inference in conjunction with traditional methods
1996 Autonomy was founded in Cambridge, England by Dr Michael Lynch and Richard Gaunt as a spin-off from Cambridge Neurodynamics
1998 Autonomy floated on the EASDAQ exchange at a share price of approximately 30p. At the height of the "dot com bubble", the peak share price was £30.
In December 2005 Autonomy acquired Verity, Inc., one of its main competitors, for approximately $500m. In 2005 Autonomy also acquired Neurodynamics.
In May 2007 after exercising an option to buy a stake of technology start up, Blinkx Inc, and combining it with its consumer division, Autonomy floated Blinkx on a valuation of $250m.
In July 2007, it acquired Zantaz, an email archiving and litigation support company, for $375M.
In October 2007, Autonomy acquired Meridio Holdings, a UK company based in Northern Ireland that specialised in Records Management software, for £20m.
In January 2009, it acquired Interwoven, a niche provider of enterprise content management software, for $775m.
In June 2010, the company announced that it was to acquire the Information Governance business of CA Technologies. Terms of the sale were not disclosed.
On 16 May 2011, it acquired Iron Mountain Digital, a pioneer in E-discovery and online backup solutions provider, for $380M.
On 18 August 2011, Hewlett Packard announced that it will purchase the company for $42.11 per share, around $10.2B. The transaction was unanimously approved by the boards of directors of both HP and Autonomy. The Autonomy board of directors also has unanimously recommended its shareholders accept the offer.
On 3 October 2011 HP closed the deal with over 87% of Autonomy shares acquired.
See Also
Sources of Information
- [1] Wikipedia