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Optimism over CA-Sterling integration plans



Computer Associates has issued a roadmap for integrating the products it has gained with the recent $4bn purchase of Sterling Software, writes Toby...

Toby Poston


Computer Associates has issued a roadmap for integrating the products it has gained with the recent $4bn purchase of Sterling Software, writes Toby Poston.

Speaking at the CA World conference in New Orleans last week, CA's chief operating officer Sanjay Kumar said there should be "demonstrable progress" in the integration of CA's and Sterling's product lines within 90 days.

Jay Huff, CA's marketing manager for northern Europe, said there was little overlap in the two companies' product suites, and believed that Sterling's mainframe storage and network management products would be particularly valuable additions to the software giant's product line.

The Sterling purchase will catapult CA into leadership of the storage software market, said James Governor from analyst group Illuminata. "CA's storage software argument is now very compelling. It has products that range from the browser to the mainframe and it can now compete head on with IBM and EMC in this area," said Governor.

"It now becomes the first software company with genuine clout in the storage arena, and can offer customers a hardware-independent storage software solution."

Governor believed that there would be no discernable downside for existing SterlingSoftwarecustomers.

"CA is going to support Sterling products," he said. "CA has the capacity to juggle multiple product lines. It has more experience in the acquisition of software companies and their products than any other company in the IT industry."

CA's roadmap for the integration of Sterling Software products

  • Network management: the Sterling acquisition brings to CA a suite of OS/390 mainframe network management products, particularly for SNA and TCP/IP networks. Again, CA will now claim to offer browser to mainframe network management.

  • Application development: CA will continue to support and extend Sterling's Cool suite of software development tools. It has promised to continue marketing Cool products independently as well as integrating them with its Jasmine II e-business platform and its Neugent and visualisation technology.

  • Storage management: using Sterling's strengths in the area of mainframe back-up and restore, resource management and advanced file systems, CA will now push itself as a provider of storage software covering the whole enterprise, from the mainframe and distributed systems down to the desktop. It will make a strong play for the storage area network market, where it recently unveiled a Lan and server-free back-up solution.

  • E-business intelligence: CA will integrate Sterling's Eureka family of business intelligence portal products, which enable users to access corporate data, such as spreadsheets, reports, or queries, from a single, personalised point of entry. It will combine Eureka with its Neugent artificial intelligence software, which can be used to analyse complex data patterns and predict trends and outcomes.

    CA will continue to market Sterling's SAP productivity tools and at a later date will add Neugent and visualisation attributes.

    • This was last published in April 2000

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