To illustrate CA's new focus, the company has again been rebranded, taking on 'CA' as the official name, dropping 'Computer Associates' entirely, and adopting a new logo.
Swainsen identified six major priorities for the company going forward, all aimed at making the software vendor more value-centric for customers.
'We intend to open ourselves up more to customers and strengthen customer relations,' he says, 'because they have told us that they would like to know more about what we are doing.'
The company has also put renewed focus on certain markets where it believes that the most growth is happening, outside of operating systems and application software.
'This is something we hope to achieve through our acquisitions of Netegrity, Concord/Aprisma and Niku,' he says, adding that the product launches happening at CA World will be the largest and most significant announcements in the company's history.
CA's third and fourth priorities involve both international investment to expand reach, and an increased drive to build a partner channel, something that CA traditionally has never really done.
In SA, Gary Lawrence, CA Africa MD, says that his aim is to move the local operations into a predominantly partner-driven model, with direct touch only at the very top-end customer level.
'While there will be some direct touch at the very high end from a support and account management perspective,' Lawrence says, 'we will still rely heavily on our partners for fulfilment. As a result, our partners are aggressively skilling themselves up.'
CA's fifth and sixth priorities involve introducing more efficient internal measures. 'Our internal processes have been streamlined with the installation and modernization of our ERP systems with a SAP system to cover financial, HR, CRM and service management. We will also be promoting a performance-based culture,' Lawrence adds.
Just being a software vendor is not good enough to survive in today's mature market. And CA admits that a lot is needed to change for the company to repair itself and look for sustainable growth into the future.
'Finally we are going to use technology to manage technology,' Swainsen says, 'which aims to reduce manual labor and, above all, reduce human error. This is the vision for our enterprise information technology management (EITM) strategy.'
-- Nicolas Callegari attended CA World as a guest of CA.