New Era Dawns As CA Names A Channel Chief

Among the announcements expected at CA World here next week will be the appointment of Mark Milford, currently senior vice president and general manager of storage management products, to a new top channel slot overseeing a single channel organization at the company, based here.

"We will have some major announcements about certain product areas and how that combined one channel organization is going to work with channel partners in certain product areas," said CA President and CEO Sanjay Kumar.

Solution providers also can expect to see a big focus on wireless solutions, more channel-only products and programs designed to recruit new solution providers and help current partners deepen their relationships with CA, Kumar said in an earlier interview.

"We're going to develop a business model for solution providers that demonstrates that you don't need to do big business with CA,you can do small deals, subscription deals, or you can pay as you go," Kumar said.

On the management front, Gad Tobaly, group general manager of channel sales, will take a different position in the company. The plan was to have Tobaly, a longtime CA direct sales force manager, build a set of partner programs that "would eventually be able to transfer into one channel group responsible for all channel products at CA," Kumar said.

"[Tobaly has been responsive, and he built up a great team," said Greg Richey, CEO of Richey Systems, an Anaheim, Calif.-based solution provider.

Partners praised CA's move to a single channel chief and credited Milford with eliminating channel conflict in the storage division.

"One person should run the channel," said Steve Pazol, president of solution provider Professional Consulting Services, Chicago. "When they had it split between two people, they didn't necessarily have a consistent message."

Partners said they are confident Milford is the right person to deliver that message.

"[Milford brings a tremendous depth of experience to the job," said Kevin Barker, managing partner at Independent Technology Group, a solution provider in Los Angeles.

Several solution providers also said they've been told that CA intends to improve partnering between them and the Unicenter direct sales force.

"From my perspective, there was continued conflict with direct sales and a lack of direction as to where the channel fit in the Unicenter space," Barker said, adding that his company lost a substantial amount of Unicenter business to CA's direct sales force during the last year, he said. "Now we'll be working as an extension of their sales direct sales team."