Not long after I broke the news that HP has dropped its OpenView brand in favour of just making it part of HP Software, I hear that CA is ditching its various sub-brands including Unicenter, eTrust, BrightStor and so on, as well as various product brand names like PestPatrol, Endevor and FileSurf….
…Instead the company will apparently use ‘CA’ and a product descriptor, so for instance Unicenter Service Desk will become CA Service Desk, and eTrust Access Control will become CA Access Control.
The change will happen over the course of the next 12-18 months, the company said. “According to CA research, the CA brand name is much stronger than these other brands. It’s therefore logical to set aside these brands in favour of a unified CA brand image,” the company said in a statement.
You may remember that Computer Associates International formally changed its name to CA Inc in February last year. The move was clearly intended to distance the company as far as possible from the $2bn accounting fraud that led to former CEO Sanjay Kumar being given a 12-year jail term.
I met Kumar shortly before his trial began, an interview in which he told me he wanted CA to, “Be the gold standard in corporate governance”. Guess he didn’t quite achieve that ambition.
The name Computer Associates originated with a Swiss firm whose assets were acquired when CA set up shop in New York back in 1976, with its first product, CA-SORT, a file management product for IBM mainframes.
In 2004, CA replaced much of its board and hired John Swainson, a 26-year industry veteran, President and CEO, in an effort to turn the company’s fortunes and reputation around.
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Anyone wanting a look at the complete list of new product names can find one here. My piece on HP dumping the OpenView brand is here.
