The VARBusiness Interview: CA Chief John Swainson

There's a lot going on at CA this week. With the company's annual CA World partner and customer conference under way this week in Las Vegas, the battle-worn company is looking to present a new face and show the world that this is not your father's CA. Gone is its formal name, Computer Associates, now the company's official legal name is just CA.

Since taking the helm as president and CEO a year ago, after its former chairman and CEO Sanjay Kumar was indicted for securities fraud, former longtime IBMer John Swainson is looking to right a ship that went far adrift in recent years. In an effort to bring back customers and partners long alienated, Swainson has reorganized CA, made some strategic acquisitions and has moved forward with plans to move more business with the channel.

Swainson also proudly boasts of a new Unicenter roadmap, which will result in the release of products this month and into next year that will bring a common enterprise management infrastructure into the distributed world. On the heels of CA World, VARBusiness senior editor Jeffrey Schwartz met with Swainson at the company's New York offices.

VB: Your stock price was recently close to a 52 week low, is Wall Street misunderstanding your value proposition?

Swainson: I'd like it to be higher, but stock prices are the last thing that I focus on. I could care less what my stock price is. The stock price is a reflection of what people want to pay for the company, and they'll pay what they think it's worth. Frankly until we demonstrate that we've restored growth to the business, it's only basically worth some multiple of cash. That's the way it's priced and that's the way it should be priced. I'm worried about the business and getting the business fundamentals right. The stock price is not my job, my job is revenue, and earnings per share, and customer satisfaction and employee satisfaction. The stock price is a derivative of those things but it is not a direct variable at all.

VB: How would you rate your accomplishments in this first year?

Swainson: I think we've made an enormous amount of progress and we have even more to go. I feel good about where the company is positioned but there's more work ahead of us than behind us, and part of that is a reflection of knowing the company much better, knowing the issues better and knowing what the opportunities are.

VB: What's going to be your key message to partners and customers at CA World this week?

Swainson: I will start with creating strong customer partnerships, focusing on a few things and doing them extremely well, making sure everything we do is aligned around those things, building durable partnerships with systems integrators, obviously restoring the infrastructure of the business, and lastly creating a strong culture based on performance and trust.

VB: In this era of consolidation, do you see CA being a part of a major acquisition, either by being acquired or making a major deal?

Swainson: I see a huge opportunity for CA to be a leader in the management space. We think we have an opportunity to do that ourselves. Clearly if there's something else that happens, it's part of the board's decision to make on behalf of the long term future of the company but I'm not focused on any of that. I'm focused on managing the business well. We have a $4 billion dollar business that I think we can double over the next four to five years. That's good enough for me.