CA – positive as ever

I learnt a new word the other day—”inculturated”.
Apparently it has something to do with the way IT systems can become part of an
organisation’s way of working. All I do know is that the spell checker in Word
hates it, which demonstrates how far “inculturated” is from any known English
language derivative.

Anyway, I digress. My increased vocabulary was down to spending
some quality time with CA to learn more about their vision, products and ideas
on the future.

I must admit to still being a new boy at the CA party. I
attended my first ever CA analyst event last year and I am still getting to
grips with this sizeable beast of an IT vendor.
I was aware of the problems faced by the old CA and have been watching
their reinvention with interest. Being polite I only mentioned the old CA once but
I think I got away with it.

John Swainson, CEO of CA, has got the virtualisation thing
big time. Nowadays no significant IT vendor’s pitch can be complete without at
least some reference to virtualisation, but Swainson went one further in
demonstrating his commitment by presenting the first 10 minutes of his keynote using
Second Life. Despite my pretty intense dislike of these virtual worlds at least
you felt he really believed in the
whole virtualisation thing, whether he did or not. It was also heart warming to
note that Swainson’s avatar was a half way decent rendition of the real life
chap. Unlike many who would be tempted to represent themselves as a nubile 25
year old blonde with suitable appendages.

From a virtualisation perspective CA have a good claim to
have been doing it for 40+ years, based on their experience with mainframe
computers. It certainly looks as if they will be squeezing every ounce of
virtualisation experience from the organisation to ensure they become a decent
player in the market. CA believes that virtualisation will succeed or fail
based on the ability of organisations to manage the virtual installation. Few
would disagree—the notion of dynamically building and deploying virtual
servers on the fly, doing work and then uninstalling in a short period of time
causes all sorts of management issues, from licensing through to security.

According to Swainson there are 5 other disruptive
technologies, as well as virtualisation, that CA are focusing on;

• Architectural
  convergence
• SOA
• Social
  networking (inside the corporate network)
• Cloud
  computing
• The
  explosion of IP addressable devices

Whilst I would agree these are new challenges I do not feel
I could label them all as disruptive.

Whilst looking into the near and medium term future is fine,
the more important challenges faced by IT is how it can further integrate into
the business and demonstrate real, tangible benefit, reduce costs and become a
key part of an organisation’s customer experience.

EITM – Enterprise IT Management is the place holder for CA’s
strategy to support organisations and help them govern, manage and secure their
IT. In support of this and moves to software as a service (SaaS), CA announced a
range of products that will help to deliver a more secure environment,
including SOA Security Manager, designed
to prevent XML-based malware attacks.

There is no doubt that CA has a very strong portfolio of
products, coupled with a deep R+D culture. Despite the current economic
conditions they remain bullish that their products will speak for themselves
and that they will emerge from the inevitable downturn stronger than before. From
what I have seen they seem to be on the right track.