By William Fellows
Computer Associates International Inc will today describe an evolution of its product strategy that it says will deliver it from traditional systems and network management into full service information management company following its $3.5bn acquisition of Platinum Technology Inc earlier this year. The addition of Platinum’s core data warehousing, data mining and knowledge management products will, CA believes, enable it to recast itself as a more broad-based application provider and tap into new fast growing markets.
CA believes that with the addition of Platinum’s systems management and the further modularization of its Unicenter TNG environment, it can finally shrug off its mainframe legacy and focus on its cross-platform capabilities. CA will describe how Platinum’s Memco security and single sign-on and AutoSys job scheduling – around 20% of Platinum’s business – will plug into Unicenter. Having calved network management, storage management, anti-virus and other point products from Unicenter, CA now regards it as a collection of products rather than a framework, a concept which has largely fallen out of favor.
BMC Software Corp, which like CA is pursuing the management market from a legacy base, says that in modularizing Unicenter into discrete products, CA is merely following a path it’s been heading down for years.
Last Wednesday CA warned, during a meeting of sell-side analysts last week, that because of European restrictions it would not be able to consolidate all of its Platinum operations until June 28, too late, reports said, for efficiencies to show up in the current quarter which closes June 30. The brokerages rushed to cut their ratings on stock ratings, CA shares slid by about $4.00 to close at around round $46.50.