Computer Associates Is No More; A New CA Will Be At Center Of Evolving IT Industry, Swainson SaysComputer Associates Is No More; A New CA Will Be At Center Of Evolving IT Industry, Swainson Says

The company once known as Computer Associates is dead, replaced by a new company called CA. The changes to the company name and logo symbolize CA's new direction, which will bring about an "evolution, not revolution" in the IT industry, CA president and chief executive John Swainson said in his opening keynote at CAWorld in Las Vegas on Sunday.

Those changes will extend into IT organizations, Swainson promised, as CA works with them to implement its vision of Enterprise Information Technology Management.

"CA is a changed company," Swainson said. "But it's not an entirely new company. We've taken the strengths of the past and combined them with new initiatives, strategies, and ideas to ensure that CA is the clear industry leader in meeting the evolving information technology needs of customers."

Swainson announced that Computer Associates is officially changing its name to CA, and unveiled a new corporate logo that removes a circle around CA, and unites the letters C and A. He said his first task leading CA has been making people "believe again in the power of CA," an effort that will frame its new "Believe Again" marketing strategy.

On Monday, in the biggest single product launch in the company's history, CA is scheduled to introduce 26 integrated products, and 85 total products, that Swainson said will provide a real substantiation of the Enterprise Information Technology Management strategy.

"EITM is CA's vision for transforming the management of IT," Swainson said. "It's a vision that unifies and simplifies the management of enterprisewide IT through the use of products based on a common, integrated, automated, and secure platform."

IT transformation has been ongoing internally at CA since Swainson joined the company a year ago, he said. "I was surprised when I walked in by the weakness and lack of integration of our own IT systems, which I think contributed to some of the difficulty we had experienced with customers."

EITM will look to unify and simplify the management of IT in much the way that SAP changed the applications software market a decade ago, said Mark Barrenechea, chief technology strategist for CA.

The company has reorganized around business units focused on storage management, security management, enterprise systems management, and business service optimization, all elements that are addressed by EITM, he said.

"We are almost declaring war on the labor problem in IT," Barrenechea said. "Unless there is an integrated platform, the only way to solve the problems in IT is to throw labor at it." Customers looking to implement EITM will be evaluated by CA and recommendations will be made for adding "modules" of EITM to the existing IT infrastructure, he said.

Realizing the promise of EITM will require partnerships with other major software and services providers, a strategy CA hasn't utilized properly in the past, said Don Friedman, chief marketing officer.

The company also plans to use outside sales channels, such as systems integrators Accenture and Bearing Point, he said. Currently, 90% of CA revenue is derived from its direct sales force, a figure that Friedman says will begin to dwindle in the years ahead.