CA Technologies has named former Taleo CEO Michael Gregoire to be the company's new CEO, taking over for current CEO William McCracken who is retiring in March.

Gregoire's appointment as CEO will be effective Jan. 7. He has also been elected to CA Technologies' board of directors, effective the same day.

Gregoire was chairman, president and CEO of Taleo for seven years, spanning a period ranging from its IPO in 2005 to its acquisition by Oracle in April for $1.9 billion. Taleo developed cloud-based talent management applications and grew its annual sales from $78 million to $324 million under Gregoire's leadership.

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Before joining Taleo, Gregoire worked at PeopleSoft for four years, serving as executive vice president of PeopleSoft Global Services. Before that he held a number of senior management posts at EDS during a span of 12 years.

McCracken, 70, has been CA Technologies' CEO since January 2010. He is leaving the company's board effective Jan. 7 and is retiring on March 31. He will continue to lead the company until Jan. 7 and will assist Gregoire during the transition through March 31. CA Technologies also has signed McCracken to a consulting contract that runs until Dec. 31, 2013.

"We are very pleased to have hired someone of Mike Gregoire's caliber," said Arthur Weinbach, chairman of CA's board, in a statement. "He clearly stood out in the field of candidates we considered, bringing to CA Technologies a compelling track record of success, leadership skills, operating expertise and software industry vision. We expect CA Technologies employees, customers and partners to benefit from his leadership, years of experience in the software industry and customer focus."

"I accepted the position because I believe CA Technologies has a compelling value proposition, a strong reputation and a growing relevance for customers, software engineering, and partners," Gregoire said in the statement. "It is clear that CA Technologies is well-positioned to lead the industry as companies find it more critical than ever to manage and secure their IT environments in the cloud and efficiently provide business services that enable them to win in the marketplace."

The company statement quoted board member Gary Fernandes, who led the search committee that selected Gregoire, as saying that the "vigorous search process" took six months.

Gregoire, 46, will relocate to the New York area to join Islandia, N.Y.-based CA Technologies, the company said.

PUBLISHED DEC. 12, 2012