CA Plans Money Back Guarantee Program For ARCserve Partners

CA is planning to launch its "More Than Backup Money Back Guarantee" program on January 1 as a way to get customers to call their local solution provider partners to help them try out its ARCserve software, said Adam Famularo, senior vice president and general manager for CA's Recovery and Data Modeling business unit.

Under the program, customers who buy ARCserve from their local solution provider and have it installed or install it themselves and for any reason don't like it can return it within 30 days, no questions asked, Famularo said.

The money-back guarantee is for the product only, and not for any services provided by the partner, Famularo said.

"We don't do services," he said. "We depend on the reseller for the services, so we can't help with that part. But if there is any issue, I promise I will have a member of my support team help the partner through it."

For CA, the "More Than Backup Money Back Guarantee" program is also an opportunity to reach out to non-CA storage solution providers with a grandfather clause under which those who work with a competing product can come into the CA channel program at the same level they enjoy with the competitors, Famularo said.

CA is also offering new partners free-use of the vendor's line of backup, replication, and high availability software.

"This is not demo software," he said. "Each partner has its own IT system for internal applications. We'll give our software to them to use for their own production environment. They can't use it to set up a NOC (network operations center) or charge for services. But they can use it themselves to make sure their own data is protected."

The new "More Than Backup Money Back Guarantee" program comes in the wake of a new CA emphasis on developing its data protection applications like ARCserve and XOsoft, Famularo said.

CA has traditionally been silent about these product lines, and sometimes has gone two to four years between new releases. However, the company is now planning a new release at least once every year, Famularo said.

"We feel we're at the place we want to be," he said. "It's now up to us to get partners and customers back on board."