Just before its giant CA World event last month, Computer Associates International Inc quietly acquired highly thought of help desk technology from the PHD Professional Help Desk division of Mahwah, New Jersey-based consulting and development services company Data Systems & Software Inc. DSSI received approximately $7m in cash from the sale. PHD, actually a division of DSSI’s International Data Operations Inc hardware reseller subsidiary, was formed in 1994, and had been shipping products for around two years. Although PHD hadn’t achieved significant market penetration – somewhere below 2% – it had achieved good branding and claims to have been one of the first to introduce ActiveX and Java into help desk software. PHD said all of its staff had been offered jobs with CA, and all of its developers were expected to remain, based at the company’s existing facility in Stamford, Connecticut. CA already sells its Paradigm Service Desk for enterprise systems, software that came with its purchase of Legent Corp back in 1995. That product is also bundled in with Unicenter TNG as Advanced Help Desk. The PHD product has been renamed Paradigm Workgroup, and will be aimed at single NT servers supporting up to 250 users, although there is expected to be some integration between the two lines. CA says the PHD product has strong user interface and configuration tools.
