News

CA Taps Bill McCracken As New CEO

Following a five-month search to replace retiring CEO John Swainson, CA yesterday dug into its ranks, naming its chairman William McCracken to run the company.

McCracken, like his predecessor, spent more than three decades at IBM. Swainson recruited his protégé McCracken in 2005 and he was named chairman in 2007. McCracken became executive chairman in September upon Swainson's retirement.

The news of McCracken's appointment came as CA announced that its first quarter revenues of $1.1 billion were up 8 percent over the same period last year, or 4 percent adjusted for currency changes. Profits were up 24 percent, or 21 percent, respectively.

By choosing McCracken, CA's board is indicating it will continue along Swainson's path. The company is looking to position itself as a provider of system, network and application performance management tools for data centers, with a focus on virtualization and cloud computing.

"Over the last five months, I've gotten a chance to see it up close with this team and focus in more on the market opportunities we're driving at, like cloud, like virtualization management, and I think it just has us positioned perfectly for where we want to go for the opportunity and it builds off of where we've been," McCracken said during the earnings call.

"He has tall shoes to fill coming after John Swainson who performed a miraculous turnaround and transformation at the company," said Ovum analyst Tony Baer. Forrester Research analyst Glenn O'Donnell agreed. “Swainson turned that company around," O'Donnell said. "He took it over when it was in its darkest days."

O'Donnell said CA's revenue and profits looked positive. While mainframe-related products remained its largest contributor, the company also reported strong growth in tools for distributed computing environments. McCracken said

CA reported record bookings for its identity management solutions, its Clarity portfolio management offering, and its application performance management business. Among the biggest selling products in the quarter for its distributed computing platforms were its application lifecycle management tools.

About the Author

Jeffrey Schwartz is editor of Redmond magazine and also covers cloud computing for Virtualization Review's Cloud Report. In addition, he writes the Channeling the Cloud column for Redmond Channel Partner. Follow him on Twitter @JeffreySchwartz.

Featured

  • Microsoft Starts Countdown to Dynamics GP End-of-Support

    Dynamics GP, Microsoft's venerable enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution for midsized businesses, is set to lose support in four years.

  • Image of a futuristic maze

    The 2024 Microsoft Product Roadmap

    Everything Microsoft partners and IT pros need to know about major Microsoft product milestones this year.

  • Windows Recall Preview Starts Rolling Out with Windows 11 24H2

    Microsoft on Tuesday began rolling out Windows 11 version 24H2, describing the update as a "full OS swap that contains new foundational elements required to deliver transformational Al experiences and exceptional performance."

  • An image of planes flying around a globe

    2024 Microsoft Conference Calendar: For Partners, IT Pros and Developers

    Here's your guide to all the IT training sessions, partner meet-ups and annual Microsoft conferences you won't want to miss.