CA Promises New Channel Commitment, Outlines Plans For Partner Program Overhaul

CA Technologies is in the midst of a major effort to rebuild its channel operations, and company executives are pledging to step up their commitment to the channel.

And this time they say they mean it.

On Sunday, opening day of the CA World 2014 conference in Las Vegas, a number of the company's channel, product and marketing executives detailed plans for rejuvenating the software vendor's channel efforts. The executives, some new to the company this year, were unusually candid in acknowledging how those efforts have fallen short in recent years.

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"We realize that we did not build CA with a partner mentality in mind. We did not build a partner culture into the way our company runs," said Alyssa Fitzpatrick, senior vice president, global partners and alliances, addressing a channel-only session Sunday afternoon.

The executives have their work cut out for them. Today less than 10 percent of CA's sales are through the channel. About 1,000 people from 400 solution providers are attending CA World, and some of them expressed skepticism about whether the company will change.

"There has been no change in the last six years. We have heard this before," said Umair Akhlaq, senior portfolio manager at Duroob Technology, a CA partner based in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, during a question-and-answer session.

Fitzpatrick, who joined the company in January, said the company's leadership "has changed across the board," including Michael Gregoire, who took over as CEO in early 2013, and Amit Chatterjee, who was named executive vice president of the enterprise systems and technology group in May.

The management changes have led to a lot of introspection about how the company has worked with the channel, and Fitzpatrick said she has faced "a lot of very real truths" about how much those efforts have been lacking. "I'm awed and honored that you're still here and your loyalty is cherished," Fitzpatrick told partners.

Chatterjee, in responding to Akhlaq's comment, went so far as to say that, before now, CA had largely "paid lip service" to working with the channel.

NEXT: CA's Renewed Commitment

"We are absolutely committed to getting it right his time," Fitzpatrick said. "We are looking at a new CA. We are changing and transforming our company...in how we go to market, how we message to the market, how we innovate in the market and how we sell."

Later in the afternoon, CEO Gregoire echoed that theme while handing out CA's annual partner awards. "I can't stress enough how important it is for our company to embrace the partner community," he said.

Several CA executives said a major reason for the new channel thinking is because customers are changing the way they buy software. The old model of customers buying perpetual software licenses directly from a vendor is disappearing.

"The way companies are consuming software is different," said Salvatore Patalano, vice president of global marketing, partners and channels. "Partners are driving those decisions."

While Fitzpatrick, Chatterjee and other CA managers offered some details about the channel program overhaul, the effort remains a work in progress.

"I don't think we're going to fix this overnight," said Adam Elster, executive vice president and group executive of worldwide sales and services, to whom Fitzpatrick reports.

The partner program has been restructured as a single global partner organization, unlike before when regional organizations tended to go their own way, Fitzpatrick said. But many polices and business processes are still being developed, including licensing models, partner support structures, dedicated technical services, and even written rules of engagement and deal management processes for channel partners and CA's sales force, according to Fitzpatrick.

About 75 percent of CA's revenue comes from about 500 top accounts, and, going forward, the company will rely on its own sales reps along with "strategic collaboration with global service providers" to maintain those accounts. The vendor will align with solution providers, managed services providers and other partners to recruit new customers. And smaller "growth" customers will be serviced exclusively through the channel, according to the company.

CA is in the process of making all product demonstration tools and request-for-proposal libraries, now used by the direct sales force, available to solution providers through the partner portal. And the portal itself is being overhauled.

Chatterjee and other managers emphasized the need for CA to work with channel partners during product development to better understand what partners and their customers are looking for. To that end, the company has posted product road maps on the partner portal, something Chatterjee said didn't exist six months ago.

But CA should go beyond providing product road maps to seeing its partners as a potential resource for innovation, said Stephen King, CEO of OpenMake Software, a Chicago-based partner that specializes in DevOps, one of CA's core technology areas. During the Q&A session and in a follow-up interview, King noted that CA has actually "de-invested" in development technologies in recent years, and OpenMake can offer advice on what customers are looking for there.

"The question is, how [does CA] embrace that? I think it can work both ways."

Fitzpatrick said CA has launched new marketing programs with partners and is offering Advantage Partner program participants an additional 20 percent discount off what the company's direct sales representatives can offer. That means partners can earn margins of 50 percent or more on some products, including CA Cloud Service Management and CA API Gateway.

What will convince channel partners all this is for real? Akhlaq at Duroob said he'll believe it when CA delivers on its promises, such as making RFPs available and generally sharing more information with partners. "Is it really going to happen, and when is it going to happen?" he wondered aloud in an interview.

Fitzpatrick acknowledged that CA has to make good on its plans. "This is a lot of very big talk and a lot of strategic ideas," she said near the end of her talk. "I ask you to listen to how the conversation has changed. It's a different company and it's a different era. This is new for us and we're learning along the way. But we're committed."

PUBLISHED NOV. 10, 2014