CA: Emerged to be an End-to-End Solution Company

Research firm Gartner estimates that about four per cent of IT budgets now go to security hardware and software as organizations deploy an array of security assets, including firewalls, intrusion-detection and prevention systems, antivirus tools and VPNs. They also employ authentication, access-control and identity management systems to ward off hackers.

The biggest challenge before the organizations is to maintain this great army. For this, companies are turning their attention to those security softwares, which simplify management, provide greater visibility and improve response times.

A company, which has made its mark in this space, is Computer Associates.

“People now understand what we are talking about managing your IT infrastructure. Technology obviously increases productivity, better results. At the same time, there is a lot of complexity in terms of networking and management,” says Pravir. “There is a demand to come up with comprehensive management solutions. There is a need to have a common infrastructure solution. We were the only ones who were historically talking about security and storage together.

” Delivering his opening keynote address at the CA World 2005 in Las Vegas, the management software company Computer Associates’ CEO John Swainson unveiled a new company, with a changed name and a new structure.

Changing its name to simply CA – the abbreviation of its original name, the 30-year-old the Islandia, New York-based Company has sported a new logo and branding under the new corporate tagline–“Believe Again”. 

With a view to simplifying the company’s offerings, which include more than 1,200 products, CA has been divided into four major business units focussing on storage, security, enterprise service management and business services optimization.

CA has redefined its vision – unifying and simplifying enterprise IT management. The company has coined a new solution set, Enterprise IT Management (EITM) that is designed to simplify and unify IT management across solutions for enterprise companies. The company has also aligned and simplified its product set around several core functionalities – Systems and Network Management, Security, Storage and Business Services Optimization (BSO).

“To address our Enterprise IT Management (EITM), we have storage, security and network management solutions, and something we developed Business Services Optimization, which is again to help align IT with respective businesses,” says Pravir Arora.

The Service Availability solution introduced by CA helps IT organizations ensure the delivery of critical business services by unifying and simplifying the management of the complex, heterogeneous technology infrastructure that supports those services. The solution provides customers with tools to improve service, minimize downtime, reduce the cost of IT operations, and tune their service-oriented infrastructures to respond more nimbly to business change. Powered by major new Unicenter releases and technology from the company’s business services optimization, storage management and security management business units, it is delivered as a customizable package of technology and services.

Typically, IT infrastructures are managed in silos, making it difficult to map the infrastructure to specific business services. This disconnect between infrastructure management and business services limits the ability of IT organizations to address issues that can lead to service downtime or slowdowns.

“CA Service Availability assures reliable access to IT services by securing, automating and optimizing the entire IT infrastructure to meet changing business demands,” said Alan Nugent, Senior Vice-President & General Manager of CA’s Enterprise Systems Management business unit. “Customers can move toward fully-automated operations by making modular investments at their own pace. CA Service Availability is unique in the breadth and depth of its best-in-class technologies, its open integration platform, and its best-practice process blueprints that accelerate time to value.

” With a market capitalization of $17 billion, CA started its operations in India in 1997 and has made investments from time to time. The company has expanded its operations with offices in eight cities – Bangalore, New Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Lucknow, Chandigarh and Hyderabad. Building customer satisfaction tops CA’s priority list. The company is of the opinion that channel will play an instrumental role in this endeavour by the company.

Apart from an image makeover, its partnership with channel partners is also undergoing a change. A couple of years back, bulk of its revenues came from direct sales. Now, the company is getting serious about doing business through partners.

The company has adopted a strategy that will increase sales while improving the bottom line for its channel partners. The company has developed a plan intended to drive more sales through the channel partner. “CA’s channel revenue is growing significantly,” says Pravir Arora. “We stared doing business with our partners a couple of years back. Today, we have reached the stage where almost about 90 per cent of the business is done through partners.

“We want our partners to do our service part because we don’t have service. We only help them in defining our products. Because if we have service, then we will be competing with our partners.

” The SMB market is one area CA would not like to lose sight of. A sound channel strategy is something of an absolute must to cater to this segment. When the company started their operations in India, the company had just two distributors and two partners. However, the scenario has undergone a change. The number of partners has now gone up to 65.

Redington and Ingram micro are CA’s distributors in India.’“We are doing a programme which is running on a fortnightly basis. We have set up through partners well-planned strategies, disseminating our information through the channel partners who are regularly visiting our offices.” Training is also a major part of channel engagement of the company.

The company is also eyeing the SOHO segment.

“We realize that there is potential in the SOHO segment. The biggest disadvantage in the home segment is that they tend to go to local guys and if you sell a product at 65 dollars it will not sell.” So, a strategy is also on the anvil to tap this segment.

The company wishes to bring the local partner into the fold, empower them and bring the value proposition to the customer together.

The company has entered into technological collaborations with India’s top IT giants, including Infosys, Wipro, HCL and CMC, and generates intellectual properties. The company has partnered with Wipro, HCL Technologies and CMC for implementation and reselling of its end-to-end solutions.