CA goes after the Aussie cloud

CA Technologies claims to be engaged in talks with the likes of Telstra, Optus/Alphawest and CSC as it seeks to have them manage their emerging cloud environments using CA's software.

The vendor's Pacific vice president and area manager with A/NZ responsibility, Brenton Smith, identified cloud management and security as areas it wanted to grow in Australia.

The vendor iss seeking work from Telstra's Silver Lining cloud project, Optus subsidiary Alphawest's cloud beta and CSC on the cloud front although it had "nothing formal" in terms of signed agreements.

"We'll try pretty hard to get into what they're doing," Smith said.

"We won't win them all but we'll be involved at some point. We are talking to them and are hopeful of getting somewhere."

The company has already won a role in Fujitsu's Infrastructure-as-a-Service cloud project in Australia, which was due to launch this month or next.

Smith said CA also wanted to grow its security business in Australia via its cloud management offerings.

"The security market in Australia hasn't been a strong market [for us] compared to [CA's success in] the rest of the world," Smith said.

"We see [cloud management] as a way of getting our strength back in that market."

Smith said the mainframe management business continued to be "number one or two" for Australia in terms of revenues.

A significant slice of that was coming through CA's relationship with EDS - both for EDS' own use as well as the services giant buying CA software for use by its customers.

Smith foreshadowed a "big program" of work in Australia in support of the company's rebranding this week from 'CA' to 'CA Technologies'.

He downplayed concerns that a swathe of recent acquisitions by CA, combined with the generic nature of its previous name, had left many in the IT industry not knowing exactly what the company did anymore.

"Our core for 37 years has been IT management software," Smith said.

"I'd be surprised if people in our industry don't see us for what we are.

"Nearly all the major organisations, banks and telcos, have multi-million dollar investments in our software. I don't we're off their radar."