Marc Andreessen of Netscape fame finally saw a massive return on his Loudcloud/Opsware venture, as the company picked an all-cash deal from Hewlett Packard. Automation looked like the way of the future in several traditional lines of business, like automotive and others with repetitive chores. Andreessen wrote at his Pmarca blog how his vision of automating large-scale datacenters and computer systems paid off big.

The legendary dot-com bust winnowed the competition in the field, he noted:

Loudcloud took off like a rocketship, raised $350 million in equity and debt financing, went public in March 2001, and was rapidly nearing $100 million in annual recurring managed services revenue when the entire market blew up and virtually all of our competitors and peers went bankrupt.

In September 2002, we did a complete restart as a public company — we sold our managed services business to EDS and turned Loudcloud into Opsware, a software company based on the core intellectual property developed at Loudcloud.

Andreessen touted Opsware’s position as a market leader in process automation. The client list for the company includes Goldman Sachs, Microsoft, Home Depot, and the Department of Defense.

HP’s offer works out to $14.25 per share. Opsware stock boomed from a $10.28 open to $14.04 at press time.