If you were among the select 5,000 looking to spend November 12-16 at the Miami Beach Convention Center in Florida for the annual CA World conference run by CA Technologies you are sorely out of luck: the event has been cancelled ahead of a pending takeover by Broadcom – and CA workers fear it is a sign of things to come.
CA World Cancellation: “Sincere Apologies”
“The decision was made to cancel the conference rather than gather so many of our customers, partners and other stakeholders before we can provide a complete update on our integration plans going forward with Broadcom,” CA Technologies said in an undated update on their website, posted on Saturday.
“We extend our sincere apologies for any inconvenience this may cause. For questions, please contact your local CA representative.”
See also: Broadcom CEO in Bullish Defence of CA Technologies Acquisition
CA Technologies has been contacted for comment on the numbers already booked for the event, which last year drew some 5,000 people to Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino in Las Vegas for enterprise IT networking, cocktails and musical entertainment by Counting Crows and Third Eye Blind.
Preparations for CA World 2016: Credit, CA Technologies
The cancellation comes as semiconductor powerhouse Broadcom awaits regulatory approval for its $18.5 billion cash acquisition.
CA Technologies workers appear to fear the worst. The company employs some 11,300 people.
Broadcom CEO Hock Tan has clearly specified his reasons for the sale, recently telling analysts that: “We believe we can bring our compute offload solutions, our Tomahawk switches, Jericho routers, fiber optics and our server storage connectivity portfolio directly to these same large enterprises that are buying CA software… Through CA, we believe we have a big doorway to engage strategically with these customers and provide them direct access at very compelling economics to… the same leading edge networking storage and compute technologies that are used to enable the cloud service providers today.”
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“What does that mean for me?”
In a discussion board for workers fearing redundancy, one commentator posted: “People just don’t understand Broadcom is going to focus on a small group of customers that bring in big bucks. They don’t need a conference for that select group of accounts. CA World was an expensive event that in the end didn’t bring in revenue. Customers didn’t buy because they went to CA World. This is a very smart move on Broadcom [sic] part. Does Compuware do an annual event? BMC? This is an old model and one that was only used so the CEO could get on a stage and read from a giant tele-prompter.”
Another wrote: “I’m just sitting waiting for the hammer to drop in November. I’ve talked to some people in support positions internally and their management is just telling them to keep there heads down and keep working, most internal CA support folks are delusional as to what is coming in November. It will be a mass layoff that will take most by surprise!”
Yet another posted: “This is huge. As a former, May recipient of my walking papers (and severance, thanks, CA!) i see this as an affirmation of the worst. As veterans know, this was super-huge @ CA. Having been to a few of these and remembering the impact they had on perception and pipeline, nothing could be worse. Hockey-T [Ed: Broadcom CEO Hock Tan] has some serious, diabolical plans for some of the BUs for sure. Why have an event where certain customers come in to see all new with IM, only to find out its getting blown up/sold/divested/forgotten, etc?”
Computer Business Review has contacted Broadcom and CA Technologies for comment.
