Upfront

CA unveils Hyderabad ITC

CA unveiled its Hyderabad India Technology Center last week, the largest such facility outside the US. Unlike, its other Indian campuses which are primarily sales and marketing offices, this facility will be at the forefront of product development for CA worldwide. An investment of $30 million is being made.

John A Swainson, President and CEO, CA said that the Hyderabad India Technology Center (ITC) will spearhead its development efforts in Asia. CA was recently caught up with internal problems and has posted a below industry average growth rate of around five percent. However, Swainson feels that there is no cause for alarm, because most of its competitors had posted higher growth rates primarily as a byproduct of acquisitions. On whether, CA itself is looking at acquisitions, Swainson replied, “We will consider opportunities as they come.”

Swainson believes that Indian enterprises are now looking at IT as a growth enabler. CIOs are now less concerned with IT maintenance rather than using IT to grow. This, he feels, is a sign of the change India is undergoing, from an off-shoring destination to one that features prominently upon the global R&D map.

The company also showcased two products, CA Cohesion Application Configuration Manager r4.5 and CA Mobile Device Management (MDM) r12 beta, that were developed completely in the India Technology Center. Cohesion automates configuration management across dynamic, distributed application infrastructures; detects and tracks changes to configurations within managed applications. MDM enables enterprises to manage, track and protect their mobile devices. It can help protect against data theft from lost or stolen mobile devices by locking the device out and, in a worst-case scenario, by wiping stored data on the device. It has preventive measures in case of unauthorized SIM replacement.

—Satyam Pati