HPE is said to be talking to private equity firms for the sale Hewlett Packard Enterprise is said to be looking to sell its software division, which would include the business from its disastrous acquisition of Autonomy in 2011, according to news reports. The enterprise IT company that emerged from the breakup of Hewlett-Packard has been restructuring its operations recently, including a US$8.5 billion deal announced in May to spin off and merge its enterprise services business with CSC. A sale of the software business would leave the company focused largely on servers, networking, storage, business critical systems and technology services. HPE is aiming at a price of between $8 billion and $10 billion for the software unit, reported The Wall Street Journal, quoting a person familiar with the situation. Reuters also earlier reported talks by HPE with private equity firms, including highest bidder Thoma Bravo, to hive off the software business. HPE does not comment as a policy on rumors and speculation, a spokeswoman said Thursday evening. The sale is in the ‘possible but not probable’ category, wrote Patrick Moorhead, president and principal analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy, in an email. “Companies are always evaluating their options, even if it’s to gauge the value of a business whose value isn’t indicative in the public stock price,” he added. The sale of the software business will also help HPE put behind it the controversial acquisition of Autonomy, a software company in the U.K. The undivided HP took a $8.8 billion charge in 2012, alleging serious accounting improprieties at Autonomy before the acquisition. The charges were denied by the former management of the software firm, leading to legal claims and counterclaims. HPE’s software division had revenue last year of $3.6 billion down by about 8 percent from $3.9 billion in the previous year, a decline it attributed to customers’ transition to SaaS (software-as-a-service) subscriptions. The unit being offered for sale is focused on software for managing business operations, with the company planning to keep software businesses linked with parts of customers’ key technology infrastructure—such as software-defined networking, WSJ said. “If they were to sell their current software business, I would expect them to make new software acquisitions at the PaaS and IaaS layer,” Moorhead wrote. “They have to be in software in some way, the only question is how.” Related content opinion Can your cloud backup provider fail? Cloud backup providers aren’t infallible. Be sure to ask hard questions of providers about their storage redundancy, geo-replication, data integrity measures, and disaster recovery capabilities. By Curtis Preston Apr 19, 2024 7 mins Backup and Recovery Cloud Computing Data Center news Cisco marries AI and security with cloud-based data center offering Cisco announces AI-based Hypershield, a self-upgrading security fabric that's designed to protect distributed applications, devices and data. By Michael Cooney Apr 18, 2024 5 mins Network Security Data Center how-to Shredding files on Linux with the shred command The shred command is a good option for removing files from a Linux system in a way that makes them virtually impossible to recover. By Sandra Henry-Stocker Apr 18, 2024 4 mins Linux news Intel announces edge AI processors New edge-optimized processors and FPGAs will power AI-enabled devices in vertical industries including retail, industrial and healthcare. By Andy Patrizio Apr 18, 2024 3 mins CPUs and Processors Edge Computing PODCASTS VIDEOS RESOURCES EVENTS NEWSLETTERS Newsletter Promo Module Test Description for newsletter promo module. Please enter a valid email address Subscribe