Swainson Challenges Industry To Reduce Complexity

For its part, CA is streamlining and consolidating its ability to provide IT governance, management and security by strengthening customer relationships, expanding CA's reach with strategic partnerships and setting higher companywide ethical standards, Swainson said.

Swainson announced the launch of the CA Customer Alliance Program, a peer-to-peer forum designed to direct customer needs to the company. The company has also increased the number of CA account directors in the past year, he said.

"We now have almost 800 strong, client-focused account managers and directors dedicated to understanding your business," Swainson said. "We've also introduced industry verticals in telco, government and financial services so that we can focus on applying our solutions in customized ways for these key segments."

Swainson named several technology partners as key to CA's "more than doubling" of its business with global systems integrators in 2006.

"We're working aggressively to expand our business with partners like Accenture, Deloitte, BearingPoint, E&Y, PWC, Cap Gemini, Fujitsu, Infosys and TCS," he said.

The "most profound" of CA's priorities is to "rebuild the culture of the company," Swainson said.

"Simply put, I believe that to be successful in building the world's leading management software company, we must have a performance-based culture based on integrity, accountability, teamwork and innovation," he said. "We approached this challenge in the usual way, by writing down our values, principles and objectives. We produced a charter that articulated our mission, vision and values. And we buttressed this core document with a Code of Ethics.

"Then we began the hard part -- making sure that everyone in the company takes these values, principles and objectives to heart."

Swainson said CA had made "tremendous progress" in delivering on its agenda in the past 18 months, but that "we are not done nor are we satisfied."

Nevertheless, he said CA customers were enjoying robust returns on investment in the company's EITM software products. Citing an IDC report sponsored by CA, Swainson said CA customers had nearly 400 percent ROI in applications management, systems management, network management, database management, and workload management and automation.

"When combining two or more of these key functional solutions, that ROI rose to almost 600 percent," he said. "This is a profound finding."

"In other words, an investment in CA's software pays for itself in less than a quarter," Swainson added. "In addition to these cost savings, participants in the study said that they were able to reduce their downtime by values ranging from 12 percent to 30 percent."

Meanwhile, CA maintains a "rock solid" commitment to R&D, Swainson said.

"CA spends about $600 million of its revenue on research, development and support," he said. "That level of investment enabled us to deliver almost 300 new versions and releases of our products last year."