Computer Associates reorg spotlights security

Computer Associates International is reorganizing in order to wring more profits from its security and systems management businesses, the company said Tuesday.

John Swainson, the former IBM executive who became CA's CEO in February, is scheduled to present a revamped company organization to employees through a memo and companywide Webcast.

John Swainson
Chief executive, CA

The new structure will expand the responsibilities of business unit general managers and seek to isolate security and systems management and security--two fast-growing business units--from less strategic product areas. CA also intends to boost sales that go through third-party partners and more effectively sell to midsize companies and consumers.

Swainson said that the organizational changes, some of which have already started, are meant to focus employees and the company on areas of potential revenue and profit growth. In a companywide memo, he said that competition is heating up as more companies move into those areas.

Systems management and security "is a fragmented market, and if we're going to differentiate and distinguish ourselves, we need to be more than tied for first place with 8 percent market share," Swainson said.

General managers of CA's five business units will be responsibility for the profitability of their respective divisions, as well as marketing and development. In the past, division managers had only development responsibility and no dedicated sales staff.

Former Novell CTO Alan Nugent, who joined the company last month, will be the senior vice president and general manager of CA's Enterprise Systems Management division. The Security Management division will be headed by Toby Weiss.

CA has created three other business units: Business Service Optimization, for more sophisticated application performance tracking; Storage Management, which will be increasingly aligned with CA's Unicenter management products; and CA Products Group.

CA's Products Group will house mature products, such as mainframe databases, which will be those that are not seeing rapid growth and are not part of CA's "core" product focus.

Swainson said that CA intends to pursue more acquisitions, particularly in the business service optimization area, as well as in security and systems management. These areas will also benefit from investment in internal development, he said.

Another discipline that CA intends to invest in is marketing, Swainson said. The company on Monday hired Donald Friedman, a former IBM marketing executive, as its chief marketing officer.

"We have a lot of work to do" in marketing, Swainson said. "The CA brand is tarnished."

The company's image suffered after an accounting scandal that implicated the company's former CEO, Sanjay Kumar, and other top executive who have been indicted on financial fraud charges. In the past, CA was also known for confrontational relationships with customers.

With the hiring of Friedman, Swainson said that the company's top management staff is complete.