CA cancels European CA World show

Rivals of software vendor Computer Associates (CA) have expressed their surprise about the cancellation of the CA World event in Barcelona planned for later this month.

Rivals of software vendor Computer Associates (CA) have expressed their surprise about the cancellation of the CA World event in Barcelona planned for later this month.

The annual event, which gives CA customers and partners the chance to talk to company representatives and to see a showcase of products, was suddenly cancelled in December.

Carlo Cecchi, head of public relations in the Europe, Middle East & Africa region at CA, said: "We cancelled the event in Barcelona only a couple of weeks ago." CA had already sent invitations to the event to clients, Cecchi added, and was following them up when clients began to "express a preference" for attending a CA event in Orlando.

The reasons for the interest in Orlando were the promise of more sessions and technical content and because "European clients value the interaction with US delegates", Cecchi said.

All clients that registered for the event in Barcelona have been registered for the Orlando event for free, he explained, adding that no CA product launches have been delayed because of the cancellation.

But Alistair Martin, marketing manager for northern Europe at Tivoli, said: "We are very surprised that CA World has been cancelled. We organised Planet Tivoli in Spain last year which was very successful, and the company is already considering holding another Planet Tivoli event in Austria next year."

Martin claimed that the number of delegates at last year's event had been up 30 per cent on the year before, and that Tivoli is expecting even more clients at the next event.

First published in Computer Reseller News