CA Hopes New Bundles Will Attract New Market

The Islandia, N.Y.-based vendor is making its eTrust, BrightStor and Unicenter applications available in three different ways for white-box builders that serve the small-business, SOHO and consumer markets, according to company executives.

Included in the CA OEM/System Builder program is eTrust Antivirus software for protecting servers, desktops and portable PCs; BrightStor ARCserve backup data protection software for Windows; BrightStor ARCserve Backup for laptops and desktops; and Unicenter Desktop DNA, which manages and migrates a PC's configuration and personalization information to a new system for deployment and disaster-recovery purposes.

Also available under the program are two of CA's consumer software products, including eTrust EZ Antivirus software for desktop PCs and eTrust EZ Armor for antivirus and firewall protection.

System builders can include the CA software applications with their white boxes in one of three ways, company executives said. Those include hard bundling, under which they can be preinstalled on the systems; soft bundling, or sold along with the system but not preinstalled; and as a separate download option for a 30-day or a 90-day trial basis.

Tom Derosier, operations director at CPUGuys, a Hanson, Mass.-based system builder and solution provider, said his company was recently contacted by CA to discuss the bundles. "The fact they are trying to get to the end user through system builders like us is cool," he said.

The storage software has the most potential for bundling, Derosier added. "A lot of people don't know how to do backups, or they don't care about it. It's up to me to take care of it for them," he said. "They are starting to store more data at home, doing more downloads. But the Internet is dirty, so they need those backups."