CA North America Channel Chief Steps Down

CA Senior Vice President Adam Famularo, a 16-year CA veteran, has stepped aside suddenly after less than six months in the top North America channel chief job after an apparent conflict over the strategic direction of the indirect channel, sources said.

Famularo, a widely recognized and respected channel executive who was named one of the 50 most influential channel chiefs by CRN in 2014, could not be reached for comment.

[Related: CA Resets Channel Base With New Partner Focus, Support ]

CA also could not be reached for comment at press time.

"This is a huge loss for CA," said Bob Venero, the CEO of Future Tech, a Holbrook, N.Y.-based solution provider, No. 266 on the SP500. "He was instrumental in working with us to close deals and develop our practice over many years. He was someone you could trust who always looked out for partners. He was in the process of taking a good percentage of direct business and moving it to the channel. That may be on hold now."

Famularo, in fact, was the driving force behind a "Channel First" strategy across the enterprise software maker’s entire product line, in a move to address, once and for all, the ups and downs solution providers have faced over many years working with CA.

Famularo had architected a major strategic shift under which CA would even work with partners in CA's top 1,500 customer-named accounts, where CA would take the direct sales lead but partners could participate.

CA partners had welcomed the changes being brought to the table by Famularo as a major step forward.

Before taking on the channel chief job, Famularo had more than a year heading up, as senior vice president and general manager of CA's AppLogic Business Unit, the software maker's cloud platform business. Before that, he had spent two years and three months overseeing CA's cloud computing business.

Famularo started his career at CA in May 1998 as a sales executive, moving up quickly to the vice president of channel sales post in April 2002, and vice president of global OEM sales in January 2004.

In January 2007, Famularo accepted the vice president of global channel strategy and partnerships job. He was named senior vice president and general manager of the recovery management and data modeling business in February 2008 before taking on the top CA cloud computing job.

PUBLISHED MAY 5, 2014