In its nearly forty years of history, CA Technologies has seen its fair share of disruption. Today, of course, disruption is everywhere – and for a newly transformed CA, it’s now time to do some disrupting instead.
Founded by technology industry legend Charles Wang in 1976, the first phase of CA’s history focused on mainframe utility software. The company lost its way in the early 2000s, as a string of acquisitions generated a confused and bloated product line, and insider trading and other illegal business practices led to a revolving door at the top of the company – as well as prison time for key executives.
What followed was a period where CA endeavored to regain the trust of its customers, culminating with the 2013 appointment of Mike Gregoire as CEO. Gregoire quickly refocused the company, hiring a new leadership team that is now well-positioned to compete in the modern digital era.
CA’s new tagline – business, rewritten by software – does a good job of distilling Gregoire’s strategy. “Software creates completely new business models,” Gregoire explains. “Not software simply as a technology product. Instead, software as a basic organizing principle for your business.”
An End-to-End Approach
To capitalize on this software-driven disruption among its enterprise customer base, Gregoire’s new team is moving the company to a portfolio approach, rather than the siloed product-centric lines of business of the past that confused and alienated customers.
This new product strategy is both holistic – providing integrated end-to-end capabilities – as well as best of breed, for customers who require single products. “As customers move away from a vertical stack, CA has greater opportunities,” according to Ayman Sayed, CA’s new Chief Product Officer.
Two important pillars of this product strategy are Agile and DevOps. “The portfolio has evolved over the last two years to Agile and DevOps,” Sayed says. In fact, Agile goes deeper than product strategy for CA. “Agile is top of mind for our customers, and it’s top of mind for us,” Sayed explains.
Read the entire article at http://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonbloomberg/2015/11/20/ca-technologies-riding-the-wave-of-disruption/.
Intellyx advises companies on their digital transformation initiatives and helps vendors communicate their agility stories. As of the time of writing, CA Technologies is an Intellyx customer. CA Technologies covered Jason Bloomberg’s travel expenses to CAWorld, a standard industry practice. Image credit: CA Technologies.
