Swainson: Channel To Play Larger Role In CA Strategy

“CA is not very good at the channel, but there is no way that the channel should not be playing a bigger role with CA,” Swainson said in an interview with CRN after taking the helm.

After a seven month search, CA last Tuesday named Swainson president and CEO-elect of the Islandia, N.Y.-based vendor. He starts immediately as president, reporting to interim CEO Ken Cron during a four-to-six month transition period, at which point Swainson will become CEO.

Swainson is a 26-year veteran of IBM and is widely recognized as being responsible for the success of IBM’s WebSphere product. He led the worldwide sales organization for IBM’s software group and was general manager of the company’s Application Integration and Middleware Group.

“There’s a lot of work to be done there because today we have stuff in retail, with OEMs and with resellers. Getting all this right will be a big focus area for us. We need a more integrated go-to-market model,” he said.“Historically, CA has not been all that good at marketing, so we will restructure all the routes to market to get a much more integrated approach,” Swainson said.

The approach, he said, may mirror some of the approaches IBM Software took, where the channel leads in SMB and the direct sales force leads in the enterprise with support from the channel.

Acknowledging that CA has a lot of work to do in the channel, Swainson said that CA decided to cancel its partner conference before he took the post, but he supports that decision because things are too chaotic. But he expects to pull off some type of event by next fall, rather than waiting for 2006.

“We need time to do this better,” he said. “CAWorld has kind of degenerated a bit, but in general I like big splashy events.”

In his last job as head of IBM software sales, software channel sales reported up through Swainson. While CA has a lot products in different areas, the primary focus of the company will be on enterprise infrastructure management, which in addition to Unicenter includes portals, security management and single sign on password technology and other related areas, Swainson said.

Partners said Swainson is going to have to make big changes to assure that CA’s direct sales culture becomes more partner-friendly.

Lesley Taufer, president of Boulder Corp., a CA partner in Boulder, Colo., said the management turmoil that has gripped CA in the past several months has definitely hurt the company. The solution provider’s CA sales are down considerably this year because of what she called CA’s on-again, off-again channel effort.

“This year our CA sales effort fizzled out to almost nothing,” she said. “Now all of a sudden, they are coming to us and aggressively going after the relationship after they ignored it for probably eight or nine months.”

Indeed, CA has a ways to go to satisfy its partners. In October, CA’s channel satisfaction rating ranked 16th out of 18 vendors in the CRN’s monthly survey of channel partners. In comparison, IBM Software ranked fifth.

Taufer said she would be happy if CA modeled its sales effort more like the sales structure that Swainson helped drive at IBM Software. “At least IBM has a cohesive partner plan,” she said. “There is nothing cohesive about CA’s partner plan at all.”

Valeh Nazemoff, director of business development at DataTech Enterprises, a CA enterprise partner in Fredericksburg, Va., said Swainson needs to drive a tighter link between the company’s direct sales force and CA’s enterprise partners.

DataTech expects its CA sales to be up 300 percent this year to $1.2 million, but they could be even greater if there were tighter ties with the direct sales team, Nazemoff said.

Although DataTech has been a CA services partner for a year, the company has received no subcontracting assignments, Nazemoff said. “There are some individuals in CA’s direct sales organization that still need to learn how to value CA partners especially the enterprise partners,” she said.

Nazemoff said she would like Swainson to hammer home the importance of partners to the CA direct sales organization.

“CA is a product company,” she said. “We sell solutions. [Swainson] needs to make sure the direct sales team works with the channel on a more strategic basis.”

Mark Demeo, senior vice president of consulting and infrastructure for Pomeroy IT Solutions, a CA partner in Charlotte, N.C., said Swainson’s biggest challenges will be to maintain robust channel investment while at the same time ensuring the continued innovation and integration of CA’s broad product line.

“The biggest hurdle we have with CA’s product line is knowing when certain product lines are being discontinued, what innovations are coming down the pike and what integration complexity exists in the existing product lines,” Demeo said.

“Like any solution vendor out there working with the channel, CA has to be willing to make that investment in the channel partner to drive through that initial excitement phase into the producing revenue phase,” Demeo added. “A lot of vendor relationship agreements fall apart because of the inability to drive the initial deals to closure so that both sides see a win-win.”

That said, Demeo said Pomeroy has seen a marked improvement in working with CA since engaging with the company on a broader scale after a CMP Solution Provider XChange event six months months ago. Pomeroy’s IT Solutions’ CA sales are expected to hit between $2 million and $2.5 million this year, up from only $1 million last year, Demeo said.

Pomeroy has even received several hundred thousand dollars in subcontracting assignments from CA, Demeo said. “We have seen a much more positive attitudes from CA’s channel management and sales reps,” he said.

Partners say one of Swainson’s biggest assets is the strong channel relationships he built up as head of the IBM WebSphere effort. Demeo, for one, said Swainson deserves a lot of credit for successfully leveraging partners with IBM’s WebSphere.

“We are a WebSphere partner, and one of the things we have noticed is IBM is adopting the WebSphere channel program model with Tivoli and some of their other [software] products,” he said.

MICHAEL VIZARD, STEVEN BURKE & SCOTT CAMPBELL contributed to this story.