Loudcloud to Sell Main Business to EDS

In another sign of the high-tech industry’s humbling times, Web browser pioneer Marc Andreessen abandoned his ambition to build a Web services giant and agreed to sell most of his latest brainchild, Loudcloud Inc., to computer systems consultant Electronic Data Systems Corp.

EDS will pay $63.5 million in cash for Loudcloud’s primary business of managing and developing Web sites for other companies.

Plano, Texas-based EDS also agreed to pay $52 million during the next three years to use a Loudcloud product called Opsware--software meant to automate information technology departments. Loudcloud is changing its name to Opsware in an effort to survive as a much smaller company.

The deal represents a small fraction of the $306 million that Andreessen and Loudcloud’s other co-founders have raised from investors since starting the company in September 1999.

Shares of Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Loudcloud rose 36 cents to $1.99 on Nasdaq. EDS rose $1.16 to $49.10 on the New York Stock Exchange.