CA Set To Lift Curtain On 'Major Overhaul' Of Unicenter Suite

Alan Nugent, new senior vice president and general manager of CA's Unicenter Business Unit, said the Islandia, N.Y.-based company is planning a summer release for the new r11 suite, now in beta test.

Calling the next version a "major overhaul," Nugent said it will have tighter integration with the company's eTrust security products, including Netegrity. Netegrity, which provides identity and access management security products, was considered one of the most notable of a new, emerging class of security software makers when CA bought it for $430 million last year.

The new version will also feature a common data model and data engine, and a continuous autodiscovery feature that automatically singles out changes.

Nugent, who took the job overseeing CA's Unicenter crown jewel one month ago after exiting as Novell's CTO, said integration with CA's eTrust product line will be a boon for solution providers.

"We have gone through great pains to work closely with [the eTrust Business Unit] to make sure that those customers that want to incorporate all of the eTrust stuff, which includes some of the Netegrity stuff we acquired last year, will be able to do that," said Nugent.

Solution providers said the tighter integration with eTrust will make Unicenter a more appealing channel product.

"Unicenter has always been one of CA's big strengths," said Todd O'Bert, president of Productive, a five-year-old security services and software solution provider based in Minneapolis. "We're interested in leveraging that and increasing its presence in the security space."

"CA is trying to bring security and networking together, which in the big picture is the right thing to do," said O'Bert, who is selling the eTrust line but not yet Unicenter. "By more tightly integrating Unicenter and eTrust within their product family, they should be able to define more incremental opportunities."