 "CA Technologies aims to deliver Digital Transformation through new DevOps, API, Agile and Security offerings")
CA Technologies (CA) started out being Computer Associates in 1974 and few people other than technology practitioners who deal with the nuts and bolts of IT would realise CA still exists after changes in leadership, strategy and many acquisitions. At CA World ‘15–which is themed around helping organisations seize opportunities in the application economy–there’s none of the weariness of managing to stay alive through what hasn’t exactly been a smooth ride in recent years, with the cloud disrupting CA and its business.
Rather, there’s a palpable sense of renewed excitement in the air as CA Technologies seems to be demonstrably turning its new vision to reality–of software at the heart of every business in every industry and how CA can help businesses make the best of this opportunity through planning, development, management and security of software. It’s clear that CA Technologies is well on its way to ensuring that not just CIOs and IT Infrastructure Managers, but CXOs across functions are familiar with what CA can do for them.
CEO Mike Gregoire opened CA World ’15 by elaborating on the changing timescales of innovation in the business landscape, and called for businesses to harness software as a basic organising principle of their businesses to stay relevant and deliver Digital transformation. “Fifteen years elapsed between the introduction of the PC in 1978 and the first Internet browser in 1993. From the Internet browser to Facebook took only about nine years. And this rate of ‘innovation compression’ is getting faster. The first true smartphones came out in the mid-2000s. It took only five years for the sharing economy to appear. You have to catch the wave when it hits–or risk being left behind," warned Gregoire as he provided examples of disruption from Uber and Airbnb and the market capitalisation of these application economy players compared to older competition like Hertz and Avis.
CA is also trotting out some of its high-profile executive hires in recent months at CA World ‘15. CA Technologies’ CTO, Otto Berkes who was one of the four founders of Xbox, and was CTO at HBO till CA hired him in June this year is around and so is Ayman Sayed, the new chief product officer who has come over from Cisco Systems
CA Technologies’ favourite term–application economy–was repeatedly highlighted and Gregoire explained that to thrive there businesses must be Agile, use application programming interfaces (APIs) and implement DevOps and invest significantly in security. Not coincidentally, also the four pillars of CA Technologies today and with a slew of new products being launched in these areas at CA World ‘15.
New DevOps solutions were the highlight. Gartner defines DevOps as a philosophy of software development focusing on rapid IT service delivery through the adoption of agile, lean practices in the context of a system-oriented approach. DevOps emphasizes people (and culture), and seeks to improve collaboration between operations and development teams. Gartner predicted earlier this year that technology that supports the DevOps toolchain is predicted to grow by 21 percent worldwide and said that by 2016, DevOps will evolve from a niche to a mainstream strategy employed by 25 percent of Global 2000 organisations.
CA Technologies has just further beefed up its DevOps solutions. CA Service Virtualization, is now available via the Microsoft Azure PaaS offering and CA said it would be available on other PaaS platforms in the future. CA Service Virtualization is built to simplify and speed development, simulation and test. CA also promised that its new API Management solutions deliver faster time-to-value and accelerate the app development process with CA Live API Creator and CA Mobile App Services, which give developers core app functionality in the form of APIs and software developer kits. The portfolio also includes two new, organically developed monitoring solutions: CA Virtual Network Assurance that gives operations teams what CA claims is an industry-first assurance for dynamic, next generation virtual networks and legacy infrastructure, and CA Unified Infrastructure Management for z Systems, a unified infrastructure management solution to provide comprehensive visibility of services that span mobile-to-mainframe systems in a single view.
CA’s Agile Management portfolio now combines software and service components from CA Technologies and Rally, which CA acquired in July 2015, to give business leaders a technology and education platform that aims to redefine how business deliverables are planned and executed.
As part of the security pillar, CA’s updated identity-centric security portfolio aims to balance growth priorities with security imperatives. Through CA Privileged Access Manager, CA will deliver breach prevention capabilities designed to protect privileged accounts in VMware NSX environments. At the same time, customers will improve operational efficiency through automation that helps them keep pace with their dynamic cloud and virtualization environments. CA also announced updates to CA Identity Suite for a simplified user experience, and a new CA Data Content Discovery to find and classify sensitive mainframe information.
In a press conference later, Gregoire also emphasised the importance of India to CA—saying he saw tremendous opportunities through the Digital India vision. However, he also said that no expansions of CA Technologies’ development centres are planned during this year. At present, CA has development centres in Hyderabad and Bangalore.
