CA Preps Unicenter r11

Computer Associates International CEO John Swainson said the enterprise software giant is set to begin delivering a breakthrough in storage security management integration with the release of its Unicenter r11 suite this month.

“[Unicenter] r11 is about delivering on the promise of EIM [enterprise information management],” Swainson said last week, noting that the shipment of the new Unicenter modules will continue into next year.

“It integrates, secures and simplifies the enterprise,” he said. “A lot of people are talking about similar things. We are delivering those things to the marketplace starting later this year. For many customers, this will represent an order-of-magnitude potential to automate their IT infrastructure.”

The Unicenter r11 network management suite provides a common data repository and user interface, making it easier to manage storage and security under a single enterprise infrastructure, said Swainson, who took the helm at Islandia, N.Y.-based CA nine months ago. He said the new Unicenter suite paves the way for storage and security information to be viewed from a single enterprise management command center. It also provides a “common workflow” so application management can be automated across heterogenous environments, Swainson said.

Solution providers said the r11 suite should result in new sales opportunities.

“As a service provider, when CA comes out with a major upgrade of Unicenter with additional benefits and state-of-the-art features, it puts us in a good position to get more services revenue,” said Martin Tarr, CEO of Tiburon Technologies, a 22-year-old Independence, Ohio, solution provider that has sold or influenced more than $1 million worth of Unicenter product sales over the past three years. “Five years ago, CA had a strong internal Unicenter support team. Now they are relying more on partners. Traditionally, 10 percent of the market are early adopters, which means significant opportunities for us.”

Tarr credits Swainson for improved field engagement with CA partners. Since CA established a services quota for its direct sales force and is not competing with partners on the services front, Tiburon has closed $50,000 in services business and has approximately $1 million in deals in the pipeline, Tarr said.

Todd O’Bert, president of Productive, a five-year-old privately held security services and software solutions company in Minneapolis, also sees the improved channel engagement paying off. He estimated his CA business will be up as much as 40 percent this year to about $1.5 million.

“Swainson is putting his mark on the company,” said O’Bert. “There are a lot of new people in the organization that understand the channel.”