CA demanding threefold China growth

Despite admitting to failings in its approach to 'breaking' China, business software giant CA has announced it intends to at least triple the revenue it is generating in the country by 2009.

John Ruthven, CA's general manager for Asia Pacific, told Reuters late last week that he intends to grow CA's revenues from China to between $80m and $100m by 2009.

The low end of CA's ambition would actually represent very little percentage growth in terms of market share, with the Chinese market itself tipped to grow threefold from $350m to $1bn during the same timeframe, according to analysts cited by Ruthven.

But Ruthven told Reuters: "We're shooting for higher than that."

The statement is tempered to a degree by the fact revenues are relatively low for CA in China, due in part to mistakes it made when first entering the territory, according to CA CEO John Swainson.

Last month, Swainson told silicon.com: "China is a territory that everybody wants to be involved in but it is also a very difficult country to do business in."

He said results in China to date have been disappointing because the company's "go-to-market strategy wasn't very good".

"We have a small team there now and it's not a big operation," he added.

One of the biggest stumbling blocks for software companies attempting to find success in China is the country's approach to intellectual property rights and the licensing fees associated with proprietary software.