Meg Whitman
HPE CEO Meg Whitman

In a move that emphasizes hybrid private-public cloud computing, Hewlett Packard Enterprise has sold some of its “non-core” software assets to Micro Focus, a U.K.-based software company, in a transaction worth about $8.8 billion. HPE will retain a 50.1-percent ownership in the company. HPE announced the “spin-merge” during its fiscal third quarter earnings release today,

HPE said its newly created Software-Defined and Cloud business will build on software the company is retaining, including OneView and the Helion Cloud platform, to deliver “software-defined hybrid IT” offerings such as Synergy, which it described as a “composable infrastructure.”

“Software is still a key enabler of our go-forward strategy, but we need the right assets to win in our target markets,” HPE CEO Meg Whitman said in a release. “Moving forward, we will double down on the software capabilities that power and differentiate our infrastructure solutions and are critical in a cloud environment.”

The company reported fiscal third-quarter net income of $2.8 billion, or $1.32 a share, on revenue of $12.2 billion, down 6 percent from a year ago.

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