New CEO shuffles the deck at CA

Five months after joining Computer Associates, CEO John Swainson will implement an internal reorganization intended to focus CA on two core areas — systems and security management — and to increase the autonomy of the company’s business-unit heads.

The realignment, announced last week, sets up five business units in CA: enterprise systems management, security management, storage management, BSO (business service optimization), and a CA products group.

Swainson expects the real growth engines in the new organization to be the enterprise systems management group, including CA’s flagship Unicenter line of management software, and the security management group, which includes CA’s eTrust products.

Although the new structure will include a storage management component, Swainson doesn’t view that market as a strategic one. “CA’s true competitive advantage in storage will be to tie it more closely to our core systems and security management business,” he said in a statement.

Systems, security, and storage management have long been focus areas for CA, but the reorganization includes one entirely new unit, the BSO group, the goal of which will be to help customers connect business and IT processes, using tools such as CA’s AllFusion application management software and its various service management applications.

Swainson’s new structure creates a catch-all unit, the products group, that will maintain legacy products such as CA’s database and application development software.

Gartner analyst Ray Paquet said the reorganization decisions show CA’s product strengths. “If you look at Swainson’s public statements over the past few months, everything has been about eTrust and Unicenter,” he said.