Kumar Still Active With CA Customers, Partners

CA interim CEO Ken Cron described Kumar as "Mr. Outside," a technologist who has good relationships with CA's top customers and a strong pulse on their day-to-day and future needs. Cron said Kumar will work with CA's other key technology strategists--Yogesh Gupta, senior vice president and CTO; Russell Artzt, executive vice president of eTrust Solutions; and Mark Barrenechea, senior vice president of product development--to drive evolution.

"The customers will still get the same time and attention they always did," Kumar said during an executive team interview at CA World in Las Vegas that also included Cron, Gupta and CA Chairman Lewis Ranieri. "The technology will get more attention."

Kumar will also turn his attention more explicitly to the integration needs of CA's systems integrators and channel partners, a task that is critical as the company seeks to penetrate more deeply into small and midsize businesses. "We have to make our products play better," Kumar said. In addition, CA is exploring how it may be able to create specific joint offerings with its partners.

Cron cautioned against expecting any major strategy shifts during his tenure as CA's interim CEO, seeking to assuage the ongoing concerns of both customers and CA's channel. In the weeks since he was named to this position, Cron said he has met with close to two dozen customers personally as well as key CA distributors and solution providers. "What we're executing against is a plan that's really evolutionary, not revolutionary," Cron said.

Questioned about the status of CA's searches for candidates to fill its open CEO, CFO and general counsel positions, Cron said CA's board is leading these efforts while he and the management team focus on pushing CA forward. He hinted, however, that the Islandia, N.Y.-based company was close to filling at least one of those roles, that of general counsel.

Although the company's own internal investigation into its accounting practices was closed earlier this month, Cron said Ranieri, who was vice chairman at Wall Street firm Salomon Brothers when he left the company in 1987, is acting as CA's liaison for the government's ongoing investigation.

Ranieri characterized the current environment surrounding corporate governance as just another cycle, pointing to past periods of government scrutiny. The main difference is that meeting today's regulatory requirements--and those of the future--will require the adoption of better technology management disciplines for previously fragmented security audits, archival solutions and the like, Ranieri said.

"There is a whole suite of technology that is going to be forced on everyone," he said.