Despite the negative publicity over its accounting practices and fraud investigations in the U.S., it?s business as usual in this region for Computer Associates International Inc. (CA). The management software company continues to deliver a broad range of software and services to help optimize the performance and efficiency of enterprise IT environments.
For Malaysia, in particular, CA plans to capitalize on the increased IT spending among local organizations by employing a ?two market sectors and three trends? strategy, says its managing director for Asia South, Piti Pramotedham.
In an interview with Computerworld, Pramotedham explains in detail how CA?s new strategy will accelerate the company?s growth.
Computerworld: How do you intend to grow and capitalize on the IT spending trend in Malaysia?
Pramotedham: We see Asia Pacific, particularly Malaysia, as a big growth area and we have identified several areas to focus on. We will be paying attention to IT spending in two market sectors: the public sector and SMBs. We will also be focusing on three technology trends that are going to give us the growth we need: security, wireless and open source.
IT spending in the public sector is going to increase as the government puts more focus on reaching out electronically to its citizens through its various e-government initiatives. Meanwhile, the SMB sector, according to IDC, is expected to spend close to USD3.8 billion to plug into the global supply chain. In doing so, their IT infrastructures need to be mission critical. We see these two sectors as a growing business for CA simply because we?ve never focused on them, and it?s time for us to penetrate these markets now.
CW: Other vendors are also eyeing the three technology trends. What makes CA different?
Pramotedham: Security issues and compliance have always been at the top of the list for CEOs and CIOs. However, security compliance now takes on a new meaning. It has a business impact and companies now need to ensure that they address their operational risks as well. The IT function in a bank is almost equal to (being) the bank itself -- if the computers are switched off, it?s almost equivalent to a bank not functioning. And if the banks are going to comply with certain regulations such as Basel II, they will have to address the security aspect in their IT infrastructure.
CA has a new model that aligns security management with business needs by addressing security concerns that impact the applications, databases and business assets essential to daily operations. We integrate four key components of security management -- threat, identity and access, security information management, and centralized management console -- under our eTrust Security Information Management umbrella.
Hence, our offerings are not just about notifying you of virus attacks but also to tell you that you may have a problem with compliance in certain areas. This is very unique in the industry.
In terms of wireless deployments, companies today will eventually roll out wireless infrastructures. When Starbucks deploys WLAN, it?s a novelty. But when a bank deploys WLANs at its branches, that?s mission critical. CA is coming up with a streak of technologies to help manage and secure enterprise-wide WLAN deployments. One of them is our Wireless Site Manager, currently in beta stage with the final version expected to be available towards the end of the year. It features automatic identification of WLAN and prevention of rogue users, automatic encryption key management, location and time-based access control, connection load balance, and built-in reporting. Unless there?s a technology like this, companies are going to be very, very reluctant to make their infrastructure wireless.
Open source, meanwhile, is definitely a trend that?s gaining momentum. Next year, the Malaysian government wants 30 per cent of its IT infrastructure to be based on open-source software. Once this happens, the private sector is going to follow suit. When organizations adopt open source in their environment the complexity of their IT infrastructure increases. This is where companies like CA excel in because we are platform neutral.
As part of our open-source strategy, we?ve recently released the source code for our Ingres relational database to the open-source community under the CA Trusted Open Source Licence. This allows the open-source community to review and submit modifications to our Ingres r3 code line. We?ve also announced the Ingres US$1 million Challenge to get the open-source community to develop value-added technology for Ingres. We?re not just paying lip service but actually putting in a critical piece of source code into open source.
CW: How are you going to reach out to potential customers in the government and SMB sectors?
Pramotedham: CA is tapping these markets by striking up partnerships with local partners. We started doing this about 12 to 18 months ago by training and developing go-to-market plans with them. We have put a renewed focus on our channels business and we?ve placed a senior person in our management team to look after our worldwide channels. What we are doing here is supplemented by what CA is doing globally.
CW: Is your latest focus a strategy to counter the competition from companies like EMC and Veritas who are acquiring companies for their software or technology in enterprise management?
Pramotedham: These companies realise that providing an end-to-end technology is something customers are looking for. However, what EMC and Veritas are doing now is what CA has already been doing. The consolidation in the software industry is pretty much led by CA. As early as the 1990s, we already knew that integrated systems are going to be key. We launched an architecture called CA90s that integrated different technologies from different acquired companies and made them work together.
It?s not good enough to buy a company, change the logo, put two CDs together and say that it?s now integrated. It doesn?t work that way. We do have a unique value proposition to offer to customers because we?ve been doing this for a very long time. Whilst other companies are investing today to get into the same space, I believe CA is already the leader in enterprise management.
CW: How are you going to contend with other veteran open-source players?
Pramotedham: Open source is going to be part of an organisation?s IT infrastructure. There will be Unix, AS/400, Windows systems, as well as Linux in the same environment. With such a heterogeneous environment, there will be issues related to costs, technology and support. This is where our strength in enterprise management and solutions bring value and provide customers with a level of security and manageability when they decide to adopt open source in their environments