Computer Associates attempted to put past accounting scandals and impending trials of former senior management behind it at last month’s CA World event in Las Vegas. In his first CA World event in charge, CEO John Swainson revealed the company is officially changing its name to CA, to reflect how it is actually referred to in the industry.
Swainson also said the company was now going to focus on five key areas – systems, network, security and storage management and the emerging field of business service optimisation. The overarching vision is EITM – Enterprise IT Management which Swainson said delivers on the promise of using technology to manage technology. Given the increased complexity and heterogeneous nature of most IT environments, and the fact that ripping and replacing that infrastructure is not an economical option, CA sees the opportunity to become the vendor of choice to manage IT more efficiently.
He also made the point that EITM is not just a marketing term but is backed by real technology; CA unveiled 26 new EITM-enabled products at the event many of which were modules of its Unicenter r11 suite of management tools.
Key releases include CA Service Availability, a customisable set of technologies and services that uses CA’s Integration Platform to detect, analyse, and resolve problems across the entire IT infrastructure – including systems, networks, applications, databases, security, and storage. It uses open standards such as SNMP, XML and SOAP and has a programmable API as well as support for integration with third parties. Modules of Service Availability include Unicenter Networks and System Management (NSM) r11 and Unicenter Advanced Systems Management (ASM) r11, which provides management capabilities for clusters, virtual OSs and virtualised environments.
On the security front, CA outlined the increasing need for security management given the range of security tools and services that organisations need to get to work in tandem. It has divided the area into three – threat management including firewalls, anti-virus and other filtering products, security information management including policy and compliance mapping and identity and access management. It was the latter that got most focus as CA unveiled Identity Manager r8, the first fruits of its 2004 acquisition of Netegrity. It pushes identity manager out to line managers and also has improved password management capabilities including the ability for users to reset their Windows log-on using a self-service module.
Swainson admitted that CA had not always had the best relationship with its customers in the past and as a result was appointing 300 account managers globally that would focus on helping customers get the most out of CA products rather than selling them new licences. The company is also introducing new vertical business units, starting with the telco and service provider market based on the network management technology it acquired from Concord Communications this summer. Swaison said the company effectively has a vertical around financial services which account for 30% of revenues and a smaller one around government business but it would consider acquiring or building specialities to services the manufacturing, retail and distribution markets.
To support its new approach CA announced a major reorganisation of its sales channel in Europe which will see former UK and Ireland boss, Tony Martin, take on the mantle of VP for Channels in EMEA.
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