CA Technologies has reorganized its data management business, a move that's led to the departure of well-known executives Dave Roberts and Tracy Balent.

The shakeup creates a more agile, focused data management business unit, said Mike Crest, data management general manager, in an interview with CRN. The organization, which has 650 employees, is responsible for the ARCserve backup and recovery software and ERwin data modeling software –- CA Technologies' most channel-focused products.

"We can do a lot better in letting people know who we are, what we can do and in driving leads for our partners," Crest said, adding that the company sees "significant market opportunities" in the lower midmarket and small business market for its data management products.

[Related: CA Technologies Partners See Progress In Vendor's Channel Efforts]

The changes, underway for several weeks, align the data management unit's sales and marketing efforts around global sales and marketing practices, Crest said, rather than focusing on regions. It also provides the business unit with more dedicated resources, he said.

Chris Ross is now leading worldwide sales, as well as continuing to lead sales in Europe and the Middle East (EMEA), while Louise Lautin leads worldwide marketing.

The reorganization also pulls the data management business unit's software design and development groups more closely together. Steve Fairbanks leads product management and development in the business unit, while Jason Shangold is in charge of support, systems, SWAT and sustaining engineering.

Another part of the reorganization involves CA's Nimsoft IT monitoring and service desk solutions, which CA acquired in 2010. While Crest said the Nimsoft unit had been "comingled" with the data management operations in some respects, it's now more tightly integrated with CA's core operations.

NEXT: Partners React To The Departures Of Roberts And Balent

CA Technologies' Crest acknowledged there have been "some [executive] departures" as a result of the reorganization, but he declined to discuss details. "Change is always difficult," he said, adding that in most cases individuals chose to leave after the changes were announced.

Roberts was vice president of Americas sales for data management between September 2010 and March of this year, when he became worldwide vice president of channel strategy for growth markets –- the latter including the company's SMB efforts.

In a brief email Roberts said he has launched his own company, Clear Fork Group, which designs sales organizations for pre-IPO businesses and provides consulting for go-to-market strategies.

Balent had been with CA since 1996 and held a number of channel management roles. Most recently she was vice president of Americas channel marketing, data management, and she was named to this year's CRN Women of the Channel Power 100 list. She could not be reached for comment.

Todd O'Bert, president and CEO of Productive, a Minneapolis-based solution provider and CA partner, said he is sad to see Roberts and Balent leave. But, CA "has a lot of solid people in place," he said, and the company has continued to be "very responsive" to channel partners' needs, from deal registration to working with CA field representatives. "We have a great relationship with CA."

"I'm not worried by these changes," echoed Shawn Giordano, sales vice president at TechXtend, a CA partner who resells both ARCserve and Erwin. He said CA has really "hit on all cylinders" with its channel efforts in the last year, including its deal registration and rebate programs. While he acknowledged that he wasn't sure how much of that was attributable to Roberts and Balent, he said the data management business unit "has a good, capable bunch of folks in charge right now."

Robert Lutton, sales and marketing vice president at Sandhill Consultants, said he was aware of the changes, but said it's too early to say how this will impact CA's channel operations for the ERwin product.

CA last month debuted a new release of ARCserve with the ability to perform data backup and recovery across physical and virtual systems running multiple operating systems. It also launched ERwin r9 with new collaborative data modeling features that help non-technical users make updates to business metadata.

PUBLISHED NOV. 9, 2012