When the year began, Mercury Interactive had vanished from the map; Hewlett-Packard had completed its acquisition of it in the closing months of 2006, erasing the Mercury brand altogether.

HP added Web application security to its portfolio by acquiring SPI Dynamics; the transaction was completed Aug 1. HP began offering SPI products including DevInspect, QAInspect and WebInspect under its own name shortly thereafter.

IBM was a step ahead with its June acquisition of Watchfire, announced two weeks before HP’s fanfare. The acquisition, which was completed on July 20, added Web application and compliance testing tools to Big Blue's Rational development portfolio, while Watchfire AppScan became IBM Rational AppScan.

Continuing the consolidation trend, Fortify Software gained the capacity to integrate its technologies with IBM's software development tools by buying Secure Software and its tools to secure software during the development life cycle.