Quest Software, Inc. 

(949) 754-8000

8001 Irvine Center Drive
Irvine, CA 92618
www.quest.com

Sales

$304 million

Business Description

Quest Software develops, sells and supports software products that improve our customers’ ability to develop, deploy and manage their packaged and custom software applications and associated software infrastructure components such as databases, application servers and operating systems. Quest fits generally into a category of software companies referred to as “Independent Software Vendors,” or “ISVs,” which are companies whose products support other vendors’ software or hardware products. We focus on delivering products for widely adopted applications and infrastructure components such as:

We generate revenues by licensing our products, principally on a perpetual basis, and by providing support, maintenance and implementation services for these products. Our products improve the quality of service of our customers’ key software applications and component infrastructure. Examples of our products’ benefits include the improvement of application and database code quality, the detection, diagnosis and resolution of hardware and software performance problems, the provision of database replication and failover capabilities and the simplified administration of large, multi-user Microsoft deployments. Our products can significantly reduce customers’ capital and operating expenses by minimizing hardware, software and/or personnel costs.

Our traditional focus has been on the Oracle database management system, and we are currently recognized as a leading Oracle ISV. Enterprises must contend with the demands of ever increasing data, and much of this data is stored in database management systems such as Oracle, IBM’s DB2 and Microsoft’s SQL Server. These trends create demand for our database tools that can improve the utilization and reliability of large-scale databases and of the developers and database administrators and other personnel responsible for maintaining reliability and performance.

Over the last four years, we have emphasized acquisitions and internal development of products supporting platforms other than the Oracle database. In March 2000, we acquired Foglight Software, Inc., and its Foglight monitoring product has become our primary Application Performance Management product. In September 2000, we acquired FastLane Technologies Inc. and its products for migration and management of Microsoft Active Directory and Exchange environments. In November 2002, we acquired Sitraka and its development tools and Application Performance Management products for J2EE applications. Revenues from these and other acquired and internally developed products have reduced the percentage of total revenues generated by our Oracle-only products to approximately 50.0% in fiscal 2003 as compared to approximately 60.0% in fiscal 2001.

Over the last three years we have worked to integrate many of our point products into integrated product suites or workbenches aimed at particular IT functions, such as database administration, application administration or Exchange administration. The first of these integrated product suites were Quest Central for Oracle and Quest Central for UDB.

In addition to integrating point products into a management suite for a given domain, such as Oracle or Exchange, we have worked to deliver tools for cross-platform management. In the fourth quarter of 2003, for example, we introduced Quest Central for Databases, which we believe is the first database management solution to combine rich domain-specific functionality and full performance management into a single console (or User Interface) for heterogeneous database environments including Oracle, DB2 (distributed and mainframe) and Microsoft SQL Server. Most medium-to-large enterprises employ applications, databases and other systems components from multiple vendors, creating the need for a comprehensive heterogeneous database management environment. Employing a common console for database administrators responsible for managing these disparate systems helps to minimize database differences.

We are likewise pursuing a heterogeneous platform management strategy with our Application Performance Management products. Key enterprise applications are highly complex and require substantial investment, personnel and expertise in their development, deployment and management. Application Performance Management involves measuring service levels provided by an application, such as application response times and application outages, and providing the capabilities to diagnose the root causes of performance problems and the means to correct or eliminate them. Because the predominance of enterprise packaged and custom-developed applications run in multi-vendor environments, the need exists for heterogeneous management tools that have deep monitoring, reporting and diagnostic capabilities for all the components of the application stack. Our Application Performance Management strategy comprises three integrated product areas that detect, diagnose and resolve application performance issues in the major packaged applications, databases and application servers.

We invest a significant portion of revenues in our product engineering capabilities, and approximately one-third of our employees work in product development, quality assurance or technical documentation roles. In building our products, we stress technical innovation and depth, ease of deployment, ease of use and tangible, readily articulated customer benefits. We sell our products primarily via our direct sales channel, supplemented by indirect sales through systems integrators and value added resellers. We operate in North and South America, Europe, Australia and Japan.

We are a California corporation incorporated in 1987. Our principal offices are located at 8001 Irvine Center Drive, Irvine, California 92618.

Products

We currently market over 50 products, which we have grouped into three main categories: Database Management; Application Performance Management; and Microsoft Infrastructure Management. Major products in these categories are described as follows.

Database Management

TOAD® and SQL Navigator®. These tools improve the productivity and capability of application developers working in the Oracle PL/SQL environment. We provide a complete and integrated development environment for coding stored procedures, schemas and SQL scripts from one intuitive graphical user interface. Debugging, SQL tuning, change analysis, and general administration features improve the quality and performance of database applications before they enter production.

Quest Central™ for Databases. Administrating large databases in production involves many tedious, error-prone and repetitive tasks. To simplify these tasks and increase the accuracy and effectiveness of database administrators (“DBAs”), we have developed Quest Central™ for Databases. Quest Central for Databases is an integrated workbench for Oracle, DB2 (mainframe and distributed) and Microsoft SQL Server databases that combines four functional components into one suite: Database Administration, Performance Diagnostics, SQL Tuning, and “live” or traditional Space. Quest Central for Databases provides a consistent look and feel for the management of Oracle, DB2 and SQL Server databases, reducing cross training costs and enabling DBAs to manage more databases without adding resources.

SharePlex®. In many cases, an organization’s data can be its most valuable resource. Ensuring that data remains available during an unplanned outage, disaster, or even planned downtime for maintenance can be imperative to an organization’s success. SharePlex provides real-time replication of Oracle databases for customers who need to ensure a current, secondary copy of their transactional Oracle database is available if the primary database goes down. Many customers use SharePlex to offload management reporting, so the activity no longer compromises the performance of transaction processing. Finally, SharePlex is also frequently used to eliminate end user disruption by providing access to data during the migration of operating systems, hardware platforms and major application releases.

Application Performance Management

Our Application Performance Management products include our Foglight and Spotlight products, and for custom J2EE applications, our PerformaSure and JProbe products. We also combine these products into Application Performance Management Suites which pair business-centric views of applications with deep domain expertise to both measure and improve the performance of packaged and custom applications.

Foglight® and Spotlight®. Foglight is a 24x7 application monitoring solution that provides a holistic view of an entire application and its related components, including application servers, web servers, databases and operating systems. Foglight offers an array of specialized cartridges focused on ERP and CRM applications to provide a complete monitoring solution for a distributed IT environment. Foglight will alert appropriate IT personnel of existing or threatened nonconforming operating conditions so that they can take preventative or corrective actions. Our series of complementary Spotlight diagnostic products allow IT personnel to drill down deeply into the many components of an application, database or other layer of the application stack to identify the root causes of a problem. With these Application Performance Management solutions, administrators can spend less time in reactive mode and more time focusing on improving and managing their IT infrastructures through notification of potential problems before end users are affected, monitoring transaction response time, resolving problems through real-time diagnostics and maintaining strict service level agreements.

PerformaSure™ and JProbe™. Custom-developed J2EE applications require a unique set of performance management solutions to assure performance and reliability across the entire application lifecycle. We provide an integrated solution designed to help all the stakeholders in J2EE application performance management accelerate the detection, diagnosis and resolution of business-threatening performance issues. Our PerformaSure and JProbe solutions provide comprehensive coverage, from code optimization in development, through pre-production testing in quality assurance, to 24x7 performance monitoring once the application goes into production. PerformaSure gives J2EE performance investigators a transaction-centric view of performance so issues may be rapidly identified and repaired before they impact customer experience. A complete performance toolkit for Java code tuning, JProbe helps developers diagnose and resolve performance bottlenecks, memory leaks, excessive garbage collection, threading issues and coverage deficiencies in their J2EE and J2SE applications.

Microsoft Infrastructure Management

Microsoft applications and platforms are the global standard for desktop productivity applications. Our products enable IT personnel to more effectively migrate to, manage and administer Microsoft Windows 2000, Exchange and Active Directory environments. Our Microsoft Infrastructure Management products fall into the following four solution sets:

Quest® Management Suite for Windows®. An integrated Microsoft Management Console (MMC), the Quest Management Suite for Windows improves the security, simplifies the delegated administration, and enhances the performance of Windows and Active Directory environments. Designed as a solution that Windows and Active Directory administrators can open and use all day, the Quest Management Suite for Windows combines Quest ActiveRoles, Quest Reporter and Spotlight on Active Directory to provide a comprehensive delegation model, reporting/auditing system and expert resolution advice for teams managing complex Microsoft infrastructures.

Quest® Management Suite for Exchange. In today’s business world, email use is growing at a staggering rate, leading to increased traffic, storage and support issues. The Quest Management Suite for Exchange provides a comprehensive set of tools to intelligently manage this growth and the related spending for mission critical Exchange infrastructures. The Suite’s features enable mailbox and public folder management, distribution list management, usage analysis, and diagnostics to optimize investment and performance in Exchange environments. This allows administrators and managers to better target investments, enforce corporate policy, enhance customer service, reduce administrative costs and improve troubleshooting efficiency. Additional functionality and integration is available for customers who have chosen Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM) as their unattended monitoring solution.

Quest® Migration Suite. The Quest Migration Suite provides a complete solution to help organizations rapidly transition from one platform to another. Whether it is an Exchange migration, a migration from Windows NT4 to Active Directory or NDS to Active Directory, the Quest Migration Suite provides the tools to accomplish migration tasks quickly, accurately and most importantly, without disruption to end users.

Quest® Consolidator. Quest Consolidator helps organizations examine their Windows storage from any angle and take corrective action. This data migration solution contains agentless storage analytics, which help organizations determine how much data they have, where it is, who owns it and when it was last used. This allows companies to determine where the “junk” data is, and provides methods to offload unused files, balance data loads or consolidate servers to make the most of their storage resources.

In January 2004, we announced a definitive agreement to acquire Aelita Software, a privately held software company, a leading provider of systems management solutions that improve the productivity, system availability and security of Microsoft Active Directory and Microsoft Exchange environments. With the proposed acquisition of Aelita, we expect to add breadth and depth to our Microsoft expertise and product portfolio and deliver a comprehensive set of product solutions that enable customers to manage today’s complex Microsoft infrastructures throughout their entire lifecycle. The combined product offering will deliver the robust solutions customers require to better administer, migrate, consolidate, recover and audit their Microsoft Active Directory and Exchange environments.
 

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