News Monday April 30, 2007
CA Inc (formerly Computer Associates) will continue to acquire companies to strengthen its base and work with partners to grow its business in Asia, said president and chief executive officer John Swainson.
He said the growth potential in Asia was huge but still small compared with other regions such as the US and Europe where information technology (IT) was ingrained.
In Asia, some markets were matured but others still emerging and Swainson believes “CA is unique, for it has a total product offering for customers to manage, govern and secure networks.”
CA is in almost all markets in Asia and claims to be the world’s fourth largest software company.
Asia-Pacific and Japan contributed 11%, or US$400mil, to group revenue of almost US$3.8bil last year.
Swainson does not expect the region to show much change in revenue contribution this year.
“We expect the contribution to be about the same albeit with a slightly faster rate of growth. Because of a smaller base, the impact would still be small (compared with contributions from the US and Europe),” he told journalists from Asia-Pacific and Japan in Las Vegas.
CA would not make any major acquisitions but would acquire emerging technologies to strengthen its product portfolio, he said.
The company has been on an acquisition trail the past few years to strengthen its base in the four core areas of business such as ESM (enterprise system management), security, storage and BSO (business service optimisation).
CA was also in the process of changing its corporate identity and product name to make the corporate brand synonymous with CA.
This is given the need to move away from its past which was tainted with fraud.
Its former CEO Sanjay Kumar was arrested and later convicted for securities fraud.
According to Swainson, CA’s biggest challenge in the past 18 months was to “get people to believe in us and take us seriously. Despite all the trouble and given our solid base, our customers understood us.”
“We want to leave that behind us. We have changed everything with new vision and mission,” he said.
(SOURCE: The STAR)