NetIQ was previously based in San Jose, California, with products that provide identity and access management, security and data center management.

[2][3] NetIQ was founded by Ching-fa Hwang, Her-daw Che, Hon Wong, Ken Prayoon Cheng and Tom Kemp in September 1995;[4] AppManager was introduced in 1996.

[5] Their February 2000 merger with Mission Critical Software[2] widened the company's focus to include systems management as well as performance.

[6][7] In 2001, NetIQ acquired Webtrends, whose software "monitors corporate Internet traffic.

NetIQ added identity and security products as well as data center and virtualization[13] to their offerings.