CA forms mid-market and storage division

Las Vegas – CA has created a new business unit focused on companies with 500 to 5,000 employees and revenues of $100 million to $1 billion to bring its Enterprise IT Management strategy to the mid-market.

The new unit, announced here at CA World, will push products exclusively through the channel, supported by up to 350 employees with fully autonomous R&D, product management, marketing, business development, and pre- and post-sales support.

CA believes this market contains 66,000 businesses and is worth $10 billion in sales.

“A lot of talk about EITM, and it has been focused on large organization and the large global system integrators, but the govern, manage and secure components in the 16 new CA Capability Solutions, which were released at CA World, span all areas of business,” said Bob Davis, senior vice president and general manager, mid-market and storage business unit for CA.

Davis said that customers in both the enterprise and mid-market space expect to have solutions that are simple, integrated and have a unified environment, but want them delivered differently.

The unit’s first order of business was releasing CA Recovery Management, a solution that integrates back up and recovery capabilities. More products will follow, Davis added.

“Too often a mid-market strategy is taking an enterprise product and using distribution to get to the mid-market. It needs to be different and needs innovation the way it is packaged and priced,” Davis said.

Bill Lipsin, the worldwide channel chief for CA, said the mid-market hasn’t been penetrated well by CA and its partners. “There will be no direct sales coverage, and it is wide open ground for our partners to work with us,” Lipsin said.

A large portion of the 66,000 companies do not have large IT departments, or are running IT through a managed service, he added.

For the Canadian market, Lipsin said that the vast majority of accounts would be in the lower part of the mid-market.

Todd Pekats, director of strategic alliances for CompuCom Systems Inc., a Dallas-based outsourcing and systems integration specialist with Canadian offices in Ottawa, Calgary and Mississauga, Ont., said CA’s new mid-market and storage unit will help reduce costs and complexity for his customers.

From his company’s experience, mid-market customers are looking for a hybrid approach. “One size does not fit all,” Pekats said.

He believes all of the software solutions available and installed today in companies has created complexity in data centres, and with that, more costs.

CompuCom has even changed its business model to align itself better to mid-market customers to take advantage of the large market.

“It is important to our growth. We are betting on this and we have already started to invest in it,” he said.

Lipsin has increased the number of channel account managers because of this new business unit.

He has also ironed out the potential conflict with the channel and the 800 CA direct sales staff. They will be paid even for a sale done through a partner.

Lipsin expects some partner growth in terms of the number of VARs because of this new unit, but said it will not be dramatic.

“We are doing a geography by geography analysis for partner growth. First we will look at our current partner base for investment. Maybe we’ll find we may not need any new partners. Maybe we have too many. Potentially there may be some more in selective geographies,” he said.

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Jim Love, Chief Content Officer, IT World Canada

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Paolo Del Nibletto
Paolo Del Nibletto
Former editor of Computer Dealer News, covering Canada's IT channel community.

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