New name, new focus for CA
With a (relatively) new chief executive and a brand new name, CA Technologies used its recent event in Las Vegas to place a bet on the cloud, writes Sara Yirrell
Las Vegas was the venue for CA World 2010
Battling for top search engine billing against the US state of California is a good enough reason to change your name, but this was just one motivation behind CA’s change to CA Technologies.
At the software vendor’s global CA World event in Las Vegas last month, the firm and its 7,000 staff, partners and customers took over the enormous Mandalay Bay hotel for a week. It was impossible to go anywhere without spotting a CA lanyard.
Chief executive Bill McCracken said CA’s name change was an ‘acknowledgement of both CA’s past and a pointer to its future as a leader in delivering solutions that will revolutionise the way IT powers business agility’.
And also because he was ‘sick of Googling CA and getting California’.
Apart from the name change, which was quietly slipped to journalists after the first keynote, the main emphasis of the whole event was the cloud – every keynote, every launch and every meeting was dominated by the cloud – indeed CA Technologies’ recent acquisition spree of SaaS specialists Nimsoft and 3Tera points to its determination to succeed in the virtual world.
McCracken appeared fully convinced of the cloud in his address to the conference.
“In a year’s time IT will not be the same as this year. Lots of things will change and we will make decisions about what our priorities are in applications. We need to look at how IT helps businesses run their businesses better.”
He said that despite the hype, the cloud is definitely going to happen.
“I came into the industry 45 years ago. I have seen every evolution and inflection of the industry. I think the cloud is going to happen. Change is taking place in this industry. This is driven by the economy, technology and user needs. When things change we need to change, as companies, individuals and industries,” he said.
“When change happens in our industry, nothing stops it. Companies need to change. Those that don’t, go to the dumpster.”
McCracken added that security in the cloud was a chief concern, but said that CA was putting that at the top of its agenda.
To back up McCracken’s cloud predictions, the software vendor unveiled a raft of cloud based products and initiatives at the event, including its Cloud-Connected Management Suite and its Cloud Commons community web site.
The vendor even commissioned an international IT survey from the Ponemon Institute which revealed that European firms (56 per cent) are more confident than their US counterparts (36 per cent) about their ability to secure cloud-based applications and data.
However, for channel players feeling threatened by the cloud, CA’s senior vice president of EMEA channel sales Jose Carvalho said there is money to be made.
“Cloud is a threat and a challenge, but also it is something that delivers opportunities for partners,” he said. “It is very difficult to imagine pure resell players surviving apart from the commodity players. The industry is moving in different directions. We want to have enough flexibility to deal with all partners. We should be able to handle every [channel] requirement.”
He added there were different versions of cloud, on different scales, all of which could yield a return for partners.
“I can’t see big corporations moving everything to the cloud, but some of their applications will move, some even to a public cloud. But smaller companies will have all their applications supported in the cloud and then there are the firms inbetween. They won’t be able to manage all these applications, and this is where the channel fits in,” he said.
VAR Logicalishas been working closely with CA as it develops its own dedicated cloud business.
Chris Gabriel, director of solutions at Logicalis, said: “Whatever it is called, the cloud is coming whether the channel likes it or not. I would say it is like the Virgin Atlantic flight to Vegas – there is a whole bunch of people getting on the flight, but for many different reasons. Cloud is going to disrupt the channel and you can either think ‘we’ll ignore it’ or put your hand in your pocket and get your brain engaged.”
But Clive Longbottom, service director at analyst firm Quocirca, although positive about CA Technologies’ technical capabilities, said the vendor needs to work on its messaging.
“What I heard was what I could have heard from so many other vendors, with very little to differentiate it from the crowd,” he said. “As CA continues to reinvent itself and hopes to open up new markets, it really has to do something that is far more hard-hitting and meaningful than just saying ‘The cloud is important and we can do the cloud’.
CA changes name and looks to cloud www.channelweb.co.uk/2263095