Q&A : 'India is a strategic market for CA'

A mammoth task awaited John A Swainson in 2004 when he took over as president and CEO of CA. Moving in from IBM, where he was a vice-president, many thought Swainson was putting his reputation and career at stake since the new position was considered to be a 'hot seat'. However, proving his detractors wrong, Swainson grew the company to be a $4 billion and Fortune 500 IT giant. The company also changed its name to CA from Computer Associates. Swainson, who is making his first-ever visit to the country, gave an interview via email to Business Standard. Excerpts:

How important is India to CA and what exactly is the agenda of your visit?

India is a strategic market for CA on multiple fronts. During this visit we will be opening our new research and development (R&D) centre in Hyderabad, which will initial house 1,600 developers. Our India Technology Centre (ITC), which is critical to CA's global development strategy, is working on some of our most important products and solutions.

India is a fast growing market for IT and large users of IT are leveraging CA products and solutions. Finally, India is home to some of the top global IT services providers in the world. We'll also be holding our CA Expo - the trade event that runs throughout Asia Pacific - in Mumbai.

You have been often quoted as stating that CA is in the business of creating products that change the way people manage technology. What does this really mean, especially when CA is being considered as a software company?

We focus on Enterprise IT Management (EITM) and create products that allow our customers to manage large, complex, heterogeneous IT infrastructure efficiently. EITM is all about products and associated services that help customers ensure that their IT systems support their business goals. Part of CA's advantage is our independence... we are not in the business of selling hardware, or applications, or services... all we do is produce IT management, governance and security software.

Globally CA is strong in infrastructure management and security segments. Is the company looking at replicating this in India?

In the area of security, CA is a leader in identity and access management and security infrastructure management. In addition, CA also has threat management products for both the enterprise and consumer markets. These are our focus areas and complement our EITM strategy well. We are already seeing strong interest from customers in India.

CA was harping on data protection software for the SME segment, and had announced plans of rolling out low-cost and efficient suite for this segment. Your Comments.

To align our effort to grow more revenue from the indirect channel, we have created a mid-market and storage business unit. The unit focuses on supporting our channel strategy, and is targeted at firms that have between 500-5,000 employees and revenues of $100 million-1 billion. By creating this new business unit, we are demonstrating our commitment to this segment.

Why was the earlier name change from Computer Associates to CA? Was this an attempt to salvage the lost image of the company after the accounting fraud case?

The timing and name change, from Computer Associates to simply 'CA' made practical sense. "CA" is what our customers, partners and other influencers around the world already called us. In addition to helping to describe our compelling value proposition (called EITM), the new brand message reflects that CA is a transformed company on many fronts.