CA's Boss Has A New Swagger

Over the past few weeks I had the opportunity to watch CA's top executives, especially CEO John Swainson, in action at intimate gatherings of partners and customers. Swainson and the entire management team are demonstrating a newfound sense of confidence that caused me to wonder if many of the company's competitors are taking CA seriously enough and whether solution providers are really paying enough attention to one of the world's largest software developers. We all know the story of CA's financial problems--books could be written on the subject and it is, perhaps, one of the most written-about subjects in the IT industry. To be fair, many solution providers suffered (aka got burned) from not only CA's financial traumas but also from its fickleness in the channel. One day it wanted to embrace the channel and the very next day it was kicking the channel in the teeth. That went on for years under old regimes. But is it time to put all of that behind you and give CA another look? Or better yet, is it time for partners who have never worked with CA to give a hard look at the company's storage and IT management software? Perhaps it is.

Here are my impressions of what I witnessed firsthand, and heard from partners and customers. With the com- pany's financial prospects more stable than they have been in years, Swainson is comfortable with himself, his story and his management team. He has assembled a group of leaders, many of whom share ties to his alma mater IBM or hail from his native Canada. In short, Swainson, who wears a tribute to Canada's engineers on his pinkie, has a group he can trust, that's watching his back and allowing him to do what he does best--inspire developers and plot a strategic technical road map. Whether he can sustain this is anyone's guess. But his story is one worth listening to and he will freely tell it to partners and customers over and over again.

Swainson will readily confess that CA is more focused than ever and that he has no desire to be in many of the businesses its competitors occupy, such as IT services or integration. He simply wants CA to be good at allowing businesses to manage their enterprise IT systems better. He unfolds his story with a single PowerPoint slide as the backdrop to a discussion titled "Transforming IT" and it resonates with partners and customers alike. Many partners I spoke to liked Swainson's message, his singular focus and his approachability. Unlike IBM's Sam Palmisano or even Microsoft's Steve Ballmer, Swainson is very accessible and seems to enjoy just mingling with the individuals who buy his product or sell his software.

Without disclosing too many details of these events, as I did agree to attend on an off-the-record basis for many of the sessions, Swainson is also frank with customers that the complexity of their IT infrastructure is only going to grow and there is no use fighting it. He's also willing to meet with partners head-on to discuss the issues surrounding CA's commitment to the channel. From the CEO's point of view, the company's dependence on partners will only grow in the coming months and years and he believes CA's compensation structure will ensure channel-friendly behavior. He also believes that while CA is best focusing its sales efforts on large corporations, the company needs the channel to penetrate and sell to midsize customers. There were two other comments Swainson made that struck a note with partners. The first was about driving innovation at CA by pulling back on acquisitions so his development team could focus on organic initiatives. Partners realized such a move, if successful, would force CA to go from integrator of software companies to a true innovator. The second comment was Swainson's frank assessment that if CA's focus on enterprise IT management were to fail, he has no Plan B!

Robert C. DeMarzo (rdemarzo@everythingchannel.com) is Senior Vice President/Editorial Director of Everything Channel.