Ca Technologies

Executive Summary

CA Technologies Inc. is a world leading firm in software and IT solutions. CA’s mission is to “help companies simplify and solve their most challenging IT problems in order to accelerate innovation” (CA Technologies, n.d., para1). However, their mission has been challenged by three critical issues. This paper is to address those issues, list alternatives that the company could pursue, and recommend the best alternative for each issue due to its advantages.

First, CA wants to simplify the IT experience for customers, yet, the company has been lagging in adapting new IT technologies and solutions. As a recommendation, CA should apply the hypercompetitive model in product offering.

Second, CA has been acquiring smaller companies to keep up with the development of IT. However, the differences in technological knowledge and expertise have created difficulties for CA to manage new acquisitions. To address this issue, it is best for CA to create a department to handle the managing duties of the new acquisitions.

Last but not least, as stated in its mission, one of CA’s main goals is to “accelerate innovation”. Yet, many of the company’s practices aim to the opposite. Our recommendation is to keep the company innovative by applying the agile model in research and development of new products.

Action steps to implement each recommendation are also provided in this paper.

Organizational profile

Computer Associates (CA) Technologies was founded in 1976 by two Queens College graduates Charles B. Wang and Russ Artzt. CA initially developed and sold automation and security software for mainframes, which were the dominating information technology at that time. Since its IPO in 1981, the company aggressively expanded by acquiring smaller competitors and doing business with Fortune 500 companies. CA became the world’s third-largest software maker in 2000 (Ryan &Du, 2013).

After surviving a takeover attempt by Texas billionaire investor Sam Wyly...