Mercury Interactive Adds New Top ExecsMercury Interactive Adds New Top Execs

Mercury Interactive Corp., a company that's managed fast growth through the recent IT-spending doldrums, is expanding its executive suite. Tony Zingale, former CEO of Clarify, becomes president and chief operating officer of Mercury, which sells testing and monitoring software, as well as other tools for improving IT performance.

Zingale has been on Mercury's board for more than two years. He had been CEO of Clarify until 2000, when it was bought by Nortel Networks Ltd., at which point he became president of Nortel's E-business consulting group.

Mercury CEO and chairman Amnon Landan says the company's goal is to become one of the five largest software companies in the world. To accomplish that, it needed additional leadership as it expands its product portfolio, geography, and partnerships.

The company's third-quarter revenue of $165.4 million means it has a long way to go to reach its goal, but quarterly sales grew 31% year over year, and Landan says the market—what he calls business-technology optimization—is one of the biggest opportunities in the industry.

"The BTO market down the road is going to be as big as the ERP or CRM market," Landan says.

Zingale says it's the opportunity to help companies make IT more efficient—"automate the last bastion in the enterprise"—that lured him from retirement.