Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) is to be spun off by HP and includes the assets of Autonomy, the UK software group that was acquired by the company for $11billion back in 2011.
That move was intended to form a key part of HP’s move into software, but HPE later wrote off 75 percent of Autonomy’s value, accusing its executives of financial mismanagement.
According to Micro Focus the deal, a rare example of a UK business buying up an overseas company, was an opportunity to significantly increase the scale of the company which will now have annual revenues of in excess of £3.4bn and will make it one of the UK's biggest tech companies.
Micro Focus was promoted to the FTSE 100 last week, replacing ARM after it was bought by Japan's Softbank with a stock market valuation of over £10billion.
Micro Focus, based in Newbury, England, has risen rapidly after a number of acquisitions and the company said that this merger would create one of the world’s largest infrastructure software companies with leading positions across a number of key products.
Started in 1976 it now employs more than 4,500 people across 80 global locations, with around 20,000 customers worldwide.
For Hewlett-Packard this move is the latest in a number of moves described as stripping the business back to its core strengths.
Last year the company was split in two creating HPE and HP Inc, which focuses on computers and printers.
The software spinoff announced today follows HPE's announcement of the sale of its business services division to CSC for $8.5bn.