CA: We're not the company we were five years ago

CA is not the same company it was five years ago its president and CEO has said, kicking off the software company's annual customer conference.

Speaking at the CA World event, John Swainson said CA has made significant changes - including implementing a new SAP-based finance system and putting in place a code of ethics for its staff.

The company has also made 15 acquisitions in the last two years and new licence sales have grown faster in the last year than at any other time, he said.

The company is keen to put its past accounting problems - which last year saw former CEO Sanjay Kumar handed a prison sentence - behind it.

Swainson said: "We are not the same company we were five years ago and not the same company we were 18 months ago or even a year ago."

On the product side the company is putting over-complex IT in its sights and warns that if the industry doesn't help companies manage that it risks losing customer confidence.

During his keynote at the conference Swainson gave some details of the company's new Unified Service Model (USM) approach - part of the Enterprise IT Management concept which it debuted 18 months ago.

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USM will give companies a common view of the IT services they use - something like the common view of the customer which is provided by CRM, he said.

The model incorporates all information that defines a particular service - including asset details, service levels, prices, costs, quality, risks, exposures and consumers. This model will help companies make more informed decisions about resource and budget allocation and business risk, he said.

Customers at the show - perhaps unsurprisingly - gave the company a thumbs up on its efforts to put the past behind it.

Charles Carroll, senior vice president at AXA Tech, said: "We haven't experienced any difficulty or seen a distraction by senior management."

Laura Leitzinger, SVP of change and risk management at OppenheimerFunds, agreed. "It hasn't impacted on the quality of the service that we are getting," she said.

And as Mike Yorwerth, Tesco's group technology and architecture director, said: "I don't even consider it. I focus on the IT."