ZDNet Australia's Technology & Business magazine spoke with John Ruthven, managing director of Computer Associates Australia, about what the chameleon-like company is really all about.
T&B: Computer Associates has spent a lot of the past 12 months "redefining" itself. In 25 words or less, what is CA?
Ruthven: CA is an organisation that develops, sells and implements software that manages eBusiness, which includes a company's infrastructure, the information and the business processes.
Current television ads for CA in Australia seem to portray the company as security-orientated. Is this the main focus?
Security is one of the six focus areas of CA, within our 3x6 strategy, which is aimed at simplifying our messaging in the market.
Key to this messaging is that we are the only genuine end-to-end security software provider--that is, mainframe to desktop. We have seen an increase in demand for our eTrust solutions as Australian organisations have put more emphasis on security, for a multitude of reasons.
How would you describe CA's commitment to Linux?
Our strategy strongly positions CA as the leader in making Linux successful in both distributed and mainframe environments.
We have delivered the industry's most comprehensive portfolio of solutions to manage, secure, preserve, and integrate Linux in the heterogeneous enterprise.
CA's goal is to provide complete enterprise management of an environment. Demonstrating this commitment we have over 50 solutions for both the mainframe and distributed Linux implementations.
Other vendors might have something to say about who is actually the leader in making Linux successful. How does CA's line of Linux products differ from those of BMC and IBM's Tivoli?
Our Linux strategy meets the challenges, issues, and requirements associated with implementing Linux in the heterogeneous enterprise.
As I mentioned before, the strategy strongly positions CA as the leader in making Linux successful in both distributed and mainframe environments. CA's solutions for both platforms fall into three areas:
- Managing the Linux operating system environment-CA's Linux Management solutions focus on all aspects of managing Linux, including systems, networks, databases, and applications. These solutions fall under CA's Unicenter brand.
- Securing and preserving data, applications and systems to minimise risk in Linux implementations-this aspect of CA Linux solutions focuses on the need to maintain high availability and security for Linux platforms.
- Integrating Linux Web environments within the heterogeneous enterprise-CA technology enables organisations with Linux-based environments to develop, manage and view critical enterprise information.
Different business model?
CA's CEO Sanjay Kumar has said that the company's business model is very different than that of competitors. Can you briefly explain that model as it pertains to the Australian market?
Our business model is much more than just a new way of licensing our software--it is a new way of doing business. Core to this model is a relentless focus on the customer, to ensure that the solutions they have or procure from us in the future deliver value--through being well implemented with their users trained.
It is about providing flexibility for our clients in terms of how the technology is procured and implemented. In some sense it is unlocking the extensive value of CA to our clients.
Ken Fitzpatrick, chief marketing officer at CA, has portrayed the company as the United Nations of software. What does this mean?
With over 1200 products across a broad range of functionality, CA has more kinds of software solutions than any other vendor. We are platform independent and we partner very strongly with most of the key players in the industry.
It basically reflects on our open standards technology, whether you run NT, Netware, Linux, or Unix, or a combination of platforms (which is quite common), CA can manage your environment.
Fitzpatrick has also vowed that the one thing the company will do better is communicate. How has the company failed to communicate in the past, and why? What is the message CA needs to communicate to the Australian market?
Communication was something that we needed to improve. We have over 1200 products. Our challenges in the past have been communicating clearly the value of our entire and complex portfolio.
The rebranding of our solutions into six sub-brands has helped simplify our messaging. We are no longer looking to be everything to everyone.
We have a very clear focus in six spaces: eTrust for Security, BrightStor for Storage, Unicenter for Enterprise Management, CleverPath for Portal and Business Intelligence, Advantage for Application Development, and AllFusion for Application Lifecycle Management.
The message we want to communicate to the Australian market is that CA is driving to deliver value and leadership in these six spaces. We offer leading technology in these core areas to help deliver value to our clients and we want to hold the number one or two market position in each of these focus areas.
Currently, what is CA's flagship product for the corporate customer? What will it be in two year's time?
In Australia and New Zealand, Unicenter continues to be the most significant revenue contributor. We have been in this market space for a long time and are the market leader--both in share and functionality.
We continue to see strong demand for service desk, asset management, service level management, scheduling, and other solutions that fall within the Unicenter brand.
Looking forward it is hard to predict, but CA is in a great position to continue to forge ahead and see dominant growth in the areas of Security and Storage, fueled by market demand.
Our services capability coupled with an extensive application development suite means you will see some exciting growth for us in this area and more and more companies are turning to CA for change and configuration management as well as portal and business intelligence.
That said, I believe you will see a more consistent revenue contribution across our six focus areas as we maintain or gain market leadership in these areas.
