CA cuts staff in sales reorganisation

Computer Associates axed nearly 500 jobs in a sales reorganisation last week. The firm, which employed over 1000 people in the UK, has cut three per cent of its staff, with further redundancies in France and Italy.

Computer Associates (CA) axed nearly 500 jobs in a sales reorganisation last week. The firm, which employed over 1000 people in the UK, has cut three per cent of its staff, with further redundancies in France and Italy.

CA claimed the reorganisation was to create a new sales structure, and to "maximise ebusiness abilities" within the company.

Jay Huff, European marketing director, said: "This is a half-year realignment programme for us. We have restructured our sales teams. In some areas staff were lost but in other areas we are currently recruiting. The whole exercise is to make us a more effective ebusiness partner."

Along with the sales restructuring programme, CA has also altered its licensing contracts. The reseller encouraged customers to commit to a three- to five-year contract. But with the rise of ebusiness, CA has claimed this is no longer feasible.

"The new economy of opportunity is transient, and changes within a couple of months," said Huff. The company, which denied that the staff losses were due to the change in the contract system, now issues contracts for much shorter periods on a monthly renewable subscription basis, in an attempt to become more flexible.

CA, which acquired storage company Cheyenne in 1996, is putting more emphasis on the storage market with high-end products from recent acquisition Stirling Software.

"The storage market doubles every year, and we want to be king of this market," said Huff. "We want a single policy to cover all the storage issues. We are focusing on an end-to-end storage message."

However, Huff denied rumours that a separate storage company, renamed Cheyenne Software, is to be created.

Mark Johnson, software product group manager at CA distributor Ideal Hardware, said: "CA's software storage solution will be available, but it is likely that it will be a CA-centric product. I have found that over the last six months the company has become much more storage focused, with specific channel-focused storage teams."