CA: It's Your Relationship
The new products are significant for two reasons: They mark a major expansion of CA's Software-as-a-Service offerings, and they broaden the lineup of products the Islandia, N.Y.-based vendor is relying on solution providers to sell.
CA still generates a big chunk of its sales through its aggressive sales force, and solution providers have at times raised questions about the vendor's channel commitment. But at the CA World 2008 user and channel partner conference in November, Bill Lipsin, senior vice president of worldwide channels, told some 600 solution providers that the company is counting on its channel partners to sell CA products in such areas as recovery management, Internet security and voice/network management.
CA also made it clear that it wants channel partners selling the new products to take the lead in managing relationships with customers. That's a marked difference from some vendors, particularly many SaaS suppliers, which maintain control of the customer relationship. "We do not get in the way of the customer-partner relationship," Lipsin said in an interview after the keynote.
Perhaps the most significant new product is the CA Instant Recovery On Demand service targeted at small and midsize businesses with 100 to 1,000 employees, said Adam Famularo, senior vice president and general manager of CA's recovery management and data modeling business unit. While most large organizations have backup and recovery systems in place, they are less common among SMBs, given the systems' cost and complexity.
The service is based on CA's XOsoft High Availability backup and recovery software. Toronto-based Geminare Inc. is providing the hosting service. The service replicates a company's business applications and data and provides automatic failover and recovery in the event of system failure. The system, for example, can be used to provide realtime replication for Oracle software, BlackBerry Enterprise Server and Microsoft Windows Server, Exchange, SharePoint, SQL Server and Internet Information Server (IIS).
CA's pitch to channel partners and customers is that the turnkey Instant Recovery On Demand service can be implemented in 24 hours or less. CA channel partners working with the new backup and recovery service will handle all implementation chores, hold the contract with the customer and manage the billing for the service.
"We're expecting that channel partners will keep the relationship with the customer," Famularo said. "They need to own that relationship."
CA also expects the Instant Recovery On Demand service to provide cross-selling opportunities for resellers of its ARCserve on-premise data backup software. Famularo said the two offerings are complementary in that ARCserve is used for data archiving -- a regulatory requirement in many industries -- while the on-demand service provides backup and recovery services for critical IT systems. CA also expects to enlist solution providers that are expanding into managed services to carry Instant Recovery On Demand, Famularo said.
Pricing for the service is tiered, with the average cost of a three-year deal covering three servers around $600 per server per month, Famularo said.
CA is offering resellers margins in the range of 30 percent to 40 percent on the service, according to Famularo, because he said CA understands that the turnkey system limits how much solution providers can charge for implementation and related services. "Resellers are making very heavy margins on this," he said.
The service is available now in North America and Germany with availability elsewhere in Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia-Pacific slated for the first half of 2009. CA is recruiting channel partners to work directly with the vendor to offer the service, although Famularo said CA plans to eventually offer the service to solution providers through distributors such as Ingram Micro Inc., Synnex Corp. and Tech Data Corp.
Powersolution.com, a HoHoKus, N.J.-based solution provider, is reselling Instant Recovery On Demand as a business- continuity service. Demonstrating the ROI of a business-continuity solution to help close deals is an effective sales strategy, said CEO David Dadian. "I believe we're going to be very successful with this," he said. His company will use the service as a vehicle to expand into midsize companies, particularly in legal and health-care markets, with 100 to 200 employees.
Dadian said CA is offering the service "at a remarkable price point" compared to disaster-recovery/business-continuity solutions from other vendors. But he said it might still be too pricey for small companies with, say, 20 workers.
MasterIT, a managed service provider in Bartlett, Tenn., became a CA channel partner several months ago when it began carrying the Instant Recovery On Demand service. "This is a competitive differentiator for us. It's a natural extension of our already successful data security practice," said J. Michael Drake, chairman and CEO. While MasterIT offers data backup and recovery services, Drake said clients in health-care and finance industries need business-continuity services with zero downtime.
Last month CA unveiled another channel-only product: CA Erwin Data Profiler, a tool for scrutinizing a business' stored data as part of a broader master data management program. The software, for example, helps administrators identify what information a company has in its customer database, evaluate the quality of the data and determine if it matches a database's structural design. Data profiling is often a critical first phase for master data management and data warehousing projects.
The product is based on Exeros Inc.'s data-profiling software, which CA is carrying under a distribution agreement with Exeros, and the software is integrated with the CA Erwin Data Modeler software.
While CA Erwin Data Profiler can be used by large companies, its $4,000-per-user price makes it a strong sell for midsize businesses, said Donna Burbank, senior principal product marketing manager. CA is particularly recruiting channel partners that provide data management consulting and related services to carry the product, she said.
Instant Recovery On Demand was one of several SaaS products CA introduced at the user/partner conference in Las Vegas. The company also unveiled CA Clarity PPM On Demand, an on-demand version of the company's project and portfolio management application that helps organizations govern IT expenses, staffing, investments and projects, and better align IT with business objectives. Clarity PPM On Demand also will be sold through channel partners, but unlike Instant Recovery On Demand, it won't be exclusive to the channel.
CA Clarity PPM software was judged the "Best PPM Technology Solution" and "Best Portfolio Analysis," and CA was named "Best PPM Strategy & Services Provider" at Everything Channel's 2008 Project and Portfolio management Summit in Vienna, Austria, in December.
A third SaaS product CA introduced at the November conference, CA GRC Manager On Demand, is largely being sold through the company's direct-sales force. That software is used to manage governance, risk and compliance initiatives across a company. CA at the time also made a number of product and technology announcements in the areas of security, service management, enterprise IT management, business services integration, and virtualization and cloud computing.