Key Channel Executive Departs Computer Associates

Mark Milford, formerly senior vice president and general manager of North American channels at CA, was a major driver of the channel preferred model for the company's storage business, which teams partners with CA's direct salespeople and compensates the sales force for selling through the channel rather than direct. CA announced the strategy in April, just prior to its user and partner conference, CAWorld. Milford, who had served as senior vice president and general manager of CA's storage business, was tapped to helm the program on the channel side, while Stephen Richards, executive vice president of sales and field operations, drove the program internally.

CA said it plans to replace Milford sometime next week, but the departure shakes the software giant at a time when it can ill-afford mistakes. In the most recent quarter, CA reported a smaller loss, but lowered its outlook and said indirect sales had not met expectations. CA president and CEO Sanjay Kumar and other executives said the company is committed to the channel preferred model and blamed the slow start on a slumping storage hardware market.

Since the spring, Milford had emerged as CA's biggest spokesperson for the channel preferred model, which was designed to increase BrightStor sales via the channel and compete more effectively with the likes of Veritas. Milford spent much of his time trying to recruit new solution providers and re-establish ties with old partners through the alluring channel preferred model.

Last month, Milford spearheaded a new campaign to woo partners, called "Going Places with Computer Associates." Milford and other CA executives toured the country, starting in New York last month, to meet with VARs in an effort to make new alliances and refresh old partnerships. In an interview at Breakaway Xchange in August, Milford said the goal of the road show is to meet with resellers to find out what they need to be more active and to turn them on to new technology such as BrightStor Portal.

id
unit-1659132512259
type
Sponsored post

"Our VARs have been pretty flat; the number of partners hasn't really gone up, and they haven't gone down," Milford said in August. "We have about 10,000 partners, but only about 4,000 are active during a given quarter."

Still, Milford clearly had high hopes for CA's new channel strategy. "The channel preferred model is doing well," Milford said. "Our sales pipeline for BrightStor has tripled since April."

CA has said that if successful for BrightStor, the channel preferred model would be expanded to other business units such as eTrust security software line. No plans have been announced yet, however.