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Computer Associates Unveils Its New Image, Name at Trade Show

Posted on: Monday, 14 November 2005, 21:00 CST

By Mark Harrington, Newsday, Melville, N.Y.

Nov. 15--LAS VEGAS -- With a new name, a "new identity" and a basket of new products, Computer Associates International Inc. went about the complex task of explaining it all to several thousand customers and business partners here this week.

Officials at the company's annual CA World trade show sought to put a troubled, slow-growth past behind by spring- boarding into a present replete with a dizzying array of new acronyms, themes, slogans and what it termed the largest release of new corporate software in its history -- all under the banner of "simplicity." A new ad campaign challenges customers to "believe again."

Starting with its new name, CA, the company unveiled a new corporate logo that marks a subtle change from one introduced two years ago -- it drops a circle around the "a," removes two colors and jams the letters together. "It's a reminder we're about simplicity," chief marketing officer Don Friedman said.

During his keynote speech Sunday night, chief executive John Swainson set the stage by telling attendees he wouldn't be talking about "all the great things we're doing in the community or how many playgrounds we've built," a reference to past keynotes that touted the company's charitable work.

He focused instead on his strategy for growth, something that chief operating officer Jeff Clarke acknowledged hasn't taken place at CA in the past five years. The latest vehicle is a corporate software strategy referred to as EITM -- for enterprise information technology management. Swainson described it as "a vision that unifies and simplifies the management of enterprise-wide IT through the use of products based on a common integrated, automated and secure platform." The new platform would sit atop existing complex software products, making them work seamlessly and be easier to use.

He acknowledged that the task of managing corporate computer systems "isn't simple," adding, "but our goal is to make it work as though it were."

At the heart of the vision is a new version of CA's flagship Unicenter software, called Release 11, that the company says promises levels of integration with companion products such as CA's security and storage offerings. "At last," Swainson said, "we're going to use technology to manage technology."

Customers, after the keynote, expressed a mixture of optimism, skepticism, praise and confusion.

Asked if he understood EITM, Angelo Paolozzi, a software engineer at Public Works and Government Services Canada, said, "Somewhat," and explained, "They want to get into the business of managing IT" in simpler, more integrated ways.

Lanny Williams, a local area network administrator at Southern Farm Bureau Insurance Co. in Columbia, S.C., said he was "very optimistic" about the new software.

It addresses difficulties he's had in troubleshooting disparate parts of CA software by integrating them into a single platform, Williams said, and it comes not a moment too soon. "It got to a point where I was kind of losing faith and confidence with it."

Harry Butler, support center manager for defense manufacturer EFW, Inc. in Fort Worth, Texas, one of about 300 customers doing early testing of the EITM products, said, "The good part I'm seeing now is everything is integrated a lot tighter." They have also made life simpler, he said: A report on all of his company's 7,000 computer assets used to take weeks to prepare; he now can do it in under four hours.

Nik Penner, a member of the technology staff at Friends Provident, a financial services company in London, said of the vision: "There didn't really seem to be much in it. There were a lot of words, but I didn't necessarily see much that was new."

He allowed that the integration of new components with Unicenter was "definitely needed. It's something we have had a problem with -- getting [the software] to work together." As for the new CA strategy, he said, "It's certainly the message. I'm certainly hopeful they'll deliver."

Even as CA added more than two dozen new products, its strategy is to pare down a software portfolio that once topped 1,200 products. Mark Barrenechea, executive vice president for technology strategy, said the new approach focuses on just four product markets -- storage, security, systems management and business service optimization -- and just 15 product subcategories divided among them.

"What used to be products now look like features as part of suites," he said.

While CA faces new competition from giants such as Microsoft Corp., which has laid out ambitious plans for the security market, Barrenechea said the Islandia company has managed a balance of "co-opetition," cooperating with rivals such as with Microsoft. "You have to learn how to dance with the alligator," he said. "John is teaching us to dance with the alligators very well."

Indeed, during Swainson's keynote, Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer delivered a video address in which he called CA "one of Microsoft's most valuable partners."

Clarke acknowledged CA's history with customers has been "tough," but he said the company is making progress. He pointed to a 25 percent improvement in customer satisfaction over the last five years and said, "It's still not as good as we'd like it to be."

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Source: Newsday, Melville, N.Y.

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