But they're doing that just now with a shot of new technology into the marketplace. Engineers at the Islandia, N.Y.-based company were eager to put their newest software, ARCserve Backup r12, into the hands of reviewers in the CMP Channel Test Center. You can read about it in the reviews section of Channelweb.

Here's a glimpse:

In a fierce market, CA needed to defend its market share in the storage backup and management space and ARCserve r12 should help it significantly. The product itself appears channel friendly, giving resellers an opportunity to deliver and add value to a key part of enterprise infrastructure -- whether it's a small enterprise or a large one.

CA is eager to time the rebirth of some of its strategic software with a significant shift in the IT space toward more server consolidation, more virtualization and ever-more-expansive needs for storage and storage management. It has a challenge: this has become a crowded market with a lot of players including, of course, Microsoft. Gone for CA are the days of flashy strings of acquisitions, tough-talking CEOs and the wooing of Wall Street with great (but not very real) earnings numbers. Today CA appears content to let its engineers and channel sales do the talking for it. That doesn't mean the message will automatically resonate.

But at least, now, CA is able to talk about its work. And that has the people inside the big building in Islandia smiling.