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Jason Stamper's Blog
CA dumps Unicenter
January 31, 2007
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.
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.
Comments
I think CA should be commended for a brave decision that is strategically correct. The challenge is in the execution of such a change and rebranding process. Many stakeholders suffer confusion, loss of indentity during such a transition. The challenge is to set in context the 1,500 or so products that CA have in their portfolio agains their top line strategy and the business drivers and challenges of their clients. A picture paints a thousand words and I hope that the programme over the next 12 to 18 months sees a clear articulation of
A. Where each product fits in relation to strategy and clients business drivers
B. Which ones share from common components as part of the integration bus at the hear of the new strategy
C. Which ones are considered strategic versus stable and due for migration or portation into strategic products and which ones are going to be end of lifed
CA is one of the biggest players in our space and independent from the operating system and hardware stakeholders. They have worked hard to put the past behind them and could be on the cusp of a whole new era for the business. I for one wish them success.
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