My expereinces with Peregrine Systems and now HP has acquired them!

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Immediately before I joined Microsoft, I was working (2001/2002) for a software vendor called Peregrine Systems  who specialise in service and asset management software. In fact, their Service Management Software called ServiceCenter was actually one of the market leaders.

Peregrine were growing, and they decided in their infinite wisdom to do some acquisitions. One such company acquisition was called Extricity. At the time, Extricity were an integration broker (known more for their B2B capabilities) and I was hired in Australia by Peregrine to help establish and drive that business in a pre-sales capacity along with a good mate of mine Nathan Craze who had been hired previously as the BDM for this line of business. Down the track, Peregrine also bought out one of their major competitors at the time for 1 billion USD called Remedy Systems.

Now, the CEO for Peregrine at the time was a chap called Stephen Gardner. Smart chap (so everyone thought), he even won an Ernst and Young “Entrepreneur of the Year Award” in 2002. Well that’s where all of the fun stopped!

Not long after that, Peregrine underwent an internal investigation for apparent “account irregularities”  as we were told. The day they announced that, both Stephen Gardner (CEO) and the CFO at the time Matthew Gless both resigned. Peregrine's shares (and mine for that matter!) dropped 61% on the basis of that news!

So.... let me cut a long story short. Peregrine fell apart from there. They sold off Extricity, split Remedy back out to a separate business, cut their workforce in more than half, Filed for Chapter 11 (US Bankruptcy code), Executives went to jail and the list goes on… My issue was that the livelihood of 1000’s of people worldwide was ruined by appalling executives and they deserved to be put behind bars. That’s only my feelings.

….HOWEVER……

they survived. They emerged from Chapter 11 Bankruptcy.

A couple of days ago, there was an announcement that HP are acquiring Peregrine! Talk about a roller-coaster ride. So now HP will have one of the market leading Service and Asset Management products available in the market. I like HP, and I think that was a good move on Peregrine’s part!