Loudcloud Completes $63 Million Sale, Changes Name to Opsware
Saturday August 17, 10:25 pm Eastern Time
SUNNYVALE, Calif. (AP) -- Loudcloud Inc., the company co-founded by Web browser pioneer Marc Andreessen, completed the $63.5 million sale of its online services business Friday to Electronic Data Systems.
Its name also changed to Opsware Inc.
The sale to the Plano, Texas-based computer systems consultant allows the newly minted Opsware to concentrate on making software that helps other companies run their information technology departments.
As part of a deal announced in June, EDS also agreed to buy $52 million worth of Opsware's software during the next three years.
Andreessen, Opsware's chairman and largest shareholder, is counting on the Sunnyvale-based company to fare better in its new incarnation than it did as a Web hosting business.
After Andreessen co-founded Loudcloud in 1999, the company lost nearly $500 million and never caught on with investors after its March 2001 initial public offering of $6 per share.
Loudcloud's struggles contrasted sharply with the early success of Andreessen's previous high-tech creation, Netscape Communications, the maker of the Web's first commercial browser.
Andreessen blamed Loudcloud's demise on the tough times in the high-tech industry -- a factor that he believes might help Opsware.
"It's much easier to start a company in a pit than when things are at the top," Andreessen said in an interview.
He pointed out that some of the nation's biggest high-tech companies -- Oracle, Microsoft, Dell Computer and Cisco Systems -- started out during industry downturns. |
