Power struggle rages for CA

Computer Associates expands ebusiness range as boardroom battle rages.

Texan billionaire Sam Wyly's campaign to oust the present board of Computer Associates (CA) directors cast a big shadow over the launch of the software giant's world conference in Orlando last week.

Nevertheless, company executives put a brave face on claims by the former chairman of Sterling Software, now part of CA. They described its annual shindig, previously held in New Orleans, as its "biggest ever".

CA's chief executive, Sanjay Kumar, used his keynote speech to pledge support for the company's channel partners, customers and ebusiness strategy.

But following Wyly's claims, he also used the platform to defend the current management.

"There are those that want to rewrite [CA's] history and stop our progress," Kumar said.

He added that after 25 "successful years" he hoped the company "would be allowed to grow for many more years to come".

The company launched four new ebusiness products at the event - its open platform Unicenter 3.0, its security software e-Trust, its storage software BrightStor, and its knowledge management solution Jasmine.

Kumar explained that the company was focusing on six main areas over the coming months - enterprise management, security, storage, ebusiness transformation, portal knowledge management and visualisation/predictive analysis.

"But just because we are concentrating on these six doesn't mean other areas are not important to us," he claimed.

CA founder and chairman Charles Wang boasted that the company has a "powerful brand that has revolutionised the industry" and is "committed to growing [our] global business in the future".

Kumar also announced a new partner scheme called CA Smart.