CA seals Siemens alliance

Computer Associates (CA) has bolstered its service capabilities in Europe through a broad strategic alliance with Siemens, which includes the acquisition of the German company's TransView systems management software.

About 150 Siemens staff will move under the CA banner and TransView will be bundled with CA's Unicenter TNG systems management infrastructure.

TransView is a network management application used by Siemens' blue chip customers in Europe.

Under the deal, Siemens will become a Unicenter TNG Premier Service Partner, selling and servicing Unicenter as its systems management platform of choice. It will also jointly support a number of regional competency centres that will be set up by CA to facilitate corporate migration to the TNG framework.

Further development centres are being established by CA in Munich and Paderborn, to be staffed by former TransView personnel.

CA has made a firm commitment to continue supporting TransView for at least another two years. The financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

Sanjay Kumar, president and chief operations officer at CA, said the Siemens employees would be of 'extraordinary value in bolstering development resources in Europe'.

Kumar restated CA's policy to expand the vendor's indirect sales channels, insisting its direct sales team would only receive full commission for pushing business at all levels through channel partners. He referred to this as 'an unprecedented level of sales co-operation'.