CA lauds mid-market strategy

Software vendor claims push is still going strong, with channel a vital part of its success

CAhas claimed its mid-market push is going strong and has hinted at future tweaks to its channel programme.

Last year, CA rolled out its first dedicated mid-market programme to spearhead its push in the space, which it defines as firms with between 500 and 5,000 employees (CRN, 24 September).

The software vendor recently launched a new version of its mid-market backup offering Recovery Management - which consists of CA Arcserve Backup r12, CA XOsoft High Availability and CA XOsoft Replication. The release was hailed as CA ‘most significant’ offering since it acquired XOsoft in July 2006.

CA also recently posted third quarter turnover of $1.1bn, an increase of 10 per cent compared to the previous year. Profit stood at $300m, an increase of 42 per cent on the previous year.

Dave Ball, global channel marketing director, told CRN: “We have been very busy with our mid-market business, including simplifying our pricing. The partner community serving the mid market has told us that working with CA has been too complicated, so we have been working hard to simplify things such as licensing and pricing.

“We are making ourselves easier to buy from and more visible to partners. The term channel conflict with CA is a thing of the past, and we certainly do not have any conflict in the mid-market,” he said.

Ball added that CA was looking at updating its channel strategy at some point but declined to reveal any further details.

“Will we expect our partners to jump through more hoops? No we will not. I think we as a vendor need to jump through more hoops. We want to keep standards high and keep moving on,” he said.