After speaking at a BusinessWire event about social media and the digital age all morning, meeting with speakers and planning the open source track for tomorrow's Innotech conference all afternoon, I finally made it home and had a few minutes to catch up on the rest of the world, and came across this: Analyst Reports Name HP a Market Share Leader in IT Management Software? What? HP a market share leader? Across the board? Rats - I went to work for the wrong company! All that market research I did before I joined BMC was useless!

Then I actually read the release, which reads like a poorly-written Wikipedia entry, and I remembered HP's been churning out fluffy press releases faster than a cotton-candy machine. In fact, today's press release comes on the heels of last week's questionable release, which The Wall Street Journal named "Incomprehensible Press Release of the Week" and said was "possibly the most jargon-packed prose we've ever seen." They went on to say, "We're not really sure [what the headline means] because the press release that headline is attached to isn't any clearer." Read it on their site for a chuckle.

So today HP announced that independent industry analyst firm IDC has declared it the No. 1 or No. 2 market share leader in several IT management software markets, a conclusion anyone who has tackled simple math should easily come to. Buying profitable companies typically increases your revenue in that area. What's interesting is that the release didn't contain a single sentence about customer benefits, cohesion between product groups or validation that the products work well. It certainly didn't mention the painful migrations HP customers are forced to go through due to the company's history of hasty acquisitions of redundant technologies.

Even the quotes from the analyst seem irrelevant to the headline: "HP Software's strength in SOA, opportunities in information lifecycle, and operations for service quality management and governance are potentially fertile areas for growth," according to Melinda-Carol Ballou at IDC. Potential growth? That's how you get elected market leader?

My favorite comedic gem: the reports referenced are two months old. Why would one of the largest companies in the world cram a weak and arguably misleading press release down the media's throats about a two-month-old report, when they've been buying companies like OpsWare for outrageous multiples as if it were the ‘90s again? Only HP's senior management team knows for sure.

I have a suspicion. You see, BMC announced our new Service Automation strategy on Monday. Gasp! Actual news! As part of the release, we announced the acquisition of Emprisa Networks. Emprisa adds network change, compliance, and configuration automation to BMC Service Automation capabilities while offering impressive multi-vendor network configuration automation capabilities. Emprisa joins the BMC family on the heels of the strategic acquisition of RealOps.

My shameless histrionics aside, I think HP's scared. They saw the news of our Service Automation strategy and knee-jerked a press release that amounted to "Oh yeah? Well we make more money … so there!" Sure, they make money. Lots of money. But what about their products? What do they do for their customers? How have they improved the day-to-day operations of your businesses? Yesterday's press release sure doesn't have the answers.

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