In a notice circulated at HostingCon in Boston last week, hosting control panel developer cPanel announced that it had acquired a financial stake in billing software company WHMCS, with an eye toward integration and optimization that could allow the many hosting providers that use both tools to manage them in a unified way.

Unlike most of the M&A activity between hosting companies, the deal between the two software vendors is a strategic move to acquire technology, particularly since the vast majority of WHMCS users are already cPanel customers.

In a conversation with the WHIR on-site at HostingCon, Aaron Phillips, cPanel’s VP of operations said the company recognized that cPanel & WHM had a need for an integrated component that would automate tasks like billing and account creation, but also recognized that such a tool would compete directly with WHMCS, if built in house. Given the quality and the popularity of WHMCS, it seemed like buying into that company was the more efficient route to the better product.

At this point, there is no concrete plan around the form that integration will take, or what changes it might present to hosting providers using either tool. According to Phillips, the deal is currently at the financial stage, with a plan to lend some of cPanel’s experience building software and managing its growth. The post announcing the deal on the cPanel blog refers to the arrangement a “brain trust.”

Matt Pugh, CEO at WHMCS says he originally developed the product to fill a gap he identified in the market while working cPanel & WHM himself (hence the name), building the product originally with that platform in mind. It seems reasonable to assume that whatever integration follows from the deal will only make the tool easier to use with cPanel, already a selling point for the 80-plus percent of WHMCS users that already use the cPanel control panel.

While there are obvious advantages to cPanel users, Pugh says the deal will not affect the product’s ability to work well with other platforms – it will continue to do so.

WHMCS announced the beta release of version 5.1 of its software early in May.

Organizationally, WHMCS is much like cPanel, in the sense that both tools are extremely popular in the web hosting business, and both companies are active in soliciting the input of their users while developing new features. Not long ago, cPanel demonstrated a willingness to hit the brakes on a project – the now-rolling-out integration of the Attracta SEO tool – to ensure its users were getting what they wanted. The exchange led to the development of a new setup wizard to manage software upgrades.

“They’re right where we were five years ago,” says Phillips. “We want to help them learn from our experience and our expertise, and avoid some of the mistakes we made.”

WHMCS has had some growing pains in recent months. Back in May, hackers used a social engineering attack to gain access to WHMCS’s hosting account at HostGator, compromising user data belonging to a large number of web hosts. WHMCS said in the wake of the attack that it was migrating to a more hardened hosting infrastructure. Pugh was transparent through the incident, and much of the company’s user community was supportive. About a week later, a suspect was arrested in the WHMCS attack.

No specifics were released about the financial details of the deal between cPanel and WHMCS.

Source from: http://www.thewhir.com/web-hosting-news/control-panel-cpanel-invests-in-whmcs-plans-integration-with-billing-software