ASG’s new deal enables Computer Associates (CA) customers to replace their scheduling technologies with comparable ASG technology and pay only annual maintenance – not an up-front software licensing fee.
ASG is clearly hoping to make the most of any customer uncertainty that may linger after CA’s recent financial troubles. Former CEO Sanjay Kumar is facing fraud charges from the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), charged with conspiracy to commit securities fraud over his time at the company.
CA was unavailable for comment as we went to press. However in a recent interview with ComputerWire, CA’s COO and CFO Jeff Clarke said that the company’s recent troubles regarding the misstatement of revenue during the tenure of a previous management team are now behind it.
We have new leadership now, and the incredible thing is that during this whole process customers have continued buying [from CA], Clarke said. When we have talked to key customers they have said ‘it’s great you have got that behind you – you have new leadership and it’s a new day.’
Meanwhile, ASG’s conversion plan is said to be internally dubbed the Better Option Plan for CA customers – an internal name that ASG happened to include in a press release – and it will, build on its ongoing successful conversion of nearly 150 CA customers from Unicenter job management tools to ASG’s job scheduling solutions, such as ASG-Zeke for z/OS.
ASG added that the offer is open to all CA customers and includes ASG’s entire product portfolio, including ASG’s latest distributed scheduling and workflow management offering, ASG-Zena.
ASG, which is headquartered in Naples, Florida, claimed to have sales of about $180m a year and 7,000 customer sites as of September 2003. Founder, president and CEO Art Allen said in a recent interview with ComputerWire that the company expects its business service management (BSM) strategy to help it to more than quadruple revenue by 2005. It has about 100 separate products, which it hopes will be made more homogeneous thanks to the BSM strategy, and as well as CA it competes with the likes of BMC Software, IBM’s Tivoli division, and HP’s OpenView line. It has made over 30 acquisitions since it was founded in 1986, as it has sought to broaden its portfolio of management tools.
On the announcement of the Better Option Plan Allen said that, For those CA customers who are eager to switch over to ASG products, we offer them peace of mind, excellent technology, free conversion analysis and the opportunity to take advantage of ASG’s Yes-based Licensing program – with totally flexible pricing options. If CA customers are looking for a stable company with good products at a fair price, ASG should be their vendor of choice.
Jim Holland, VP of product management at ASG, said, A great inhibitor to migrating to another program is the risk of conversion. Having our conversion team conduct the conversion analysis and do it free-of-charge makes it a risk-free move for all the stakeholders.
