CA Technologies: Bringing the Cloud to Earth Essay

CA Technologies wanted to be viewed as the leader of their blood sector, offer quality service while keeping their composition aligned and favorable in a strong corporate culture. However, the leaders of the geological formation did non agree on how the organization should achieve these goals nor were they confident that their business social organisation could sustain them.Over all(prenominal), CA Technologies financial performance is viewed as stable and growing. The organization had shown growth in revenue, income from continued operations and stock holders equity amongst March 2007 and March 2011. Furthermore, the company had grown their assets and reduced their long marge debt during the said(prenominal) time frame (Annual Report).CA Technologies cerebrate was/is creating solutions to contribute to their customers businesses and nominate them in a challenging IT environment (p2). Their of import customer focus was degree Celsius0 of the Fortune 2000 organizations t hat were $2 billion businesses and above. None-the-less as their harvesting rootage changed so did their customer base, to $300 million to $2 billion coat companies (p1,13). Their customer base is international consisting of companies from the United States, Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Their consumers come from unlike industries including banks, insurance companies, financial services, governments, manufactures, engine room companies, retailers, educational institutes and health c atomic number 18 providers. Their ware line consists of service management and assurance, mainframe, project and portfolio management, security, virtualization and automation, and dapple computing (Annual Report).CA Technologies chooses to go to mart through their own sales and marketing team up and by leveraging partners. They have selected strategic partners to help them enter into newbornfangled markets, grow their product awargonness and integrate different technologies. At the s ame time they have their own direct sales team to build rapport with customers and to use initial consumers feedback to cannibalize on new opportunities (Annual Report).It is imperative that they use multiple ways to go to market because this is a highly private-enterprise(a) industry. At one point the organizations merger and acquisitions team had about 250 to 300 companies on their radar at one time and in nine months they had acquired nine organizations and within xii months they had invested close to $1 billion in acquisitions (p11). Some of these organizations ar dismission to be commentators and a nonher(prenominal)s are direct competition, none-the-less there is a lot of competition. Furthermore, this market is non saturated as it is changing every day and has capability for new entrants. When the focus is on cloud technology and not their safe portfolio, calling cloud technology highly competitive is an to a lower placestatement. To display how competitive the ind ustry is there is an online newspaper called cloudTimes that has a list of the top 100 stain Computing Companies (Martin Tantow).The CRN (online technology cite) goes as far as lean the coolest cloud computing vendors by their business category (CRN). There are several other articles such as The Top 150 Players in pervert Computing, 85 Cloud Computing Vendors Shaping the emerge Cloud and more (Ray DePena). The buyers have a corking deal of bargain power. With so legion(predicate) organizations offering cloud services and offering to customize their services for customers business needs, there is a lot of competition. The CRN breaks down Coolest Cloud companies by the top 20 in each cloud specialization. These specializations are Platform and Development, Infrastructure Vendors, Security, Storage and Data Center, Applications and Software (Mark Tantow). CA Technologies was listed under Coolest Cloud top 20 for security.This specialization may give them a leg up especially i n the Security market. On the other hand, if an organization is looking for a generalized cloud function, this may monish that organization from choosing CA technologies. The suppliers in this situation are the employees and they have an ample amount of bargaining power. With there being hundreds of Cloud companies currently, more get-go and existing companies expanding their cloud products, the job market is large. Microsoft alone has reported they pull up stakes create 14 million jobs from 2011- 2015 due(p) to public and private cloud computing (John Callaham).CA Technologies has 13,400 employees, 4,000 are in sales and marketing and 4,400 employees are in product development (Annual Report). Selling, marketing and product development are the rolls that will be created and that other companies are looking to fill. If not all employees, nearly dickens thirds of the organizations employees have a great deal of bargaining power due to the expansion and demand for experience wor kers in this field.There are several substitutes to cloud computing and approximately of them are what organizations were using prior to cloud computing. Some of these substitutes are main frames, networks, and email. The plus is CA Technologies already offers the substitute services. There are many commentators to cloud computing right now that we use every day, for prototype Microsoft is a complementor to Google.Docs. A company that offers the cloud also has the power to see what complementors are vent to work with their cloud, some of these complementors can be calendars, emails, account book processors and many other every day applications.On the Treacy and Wiersema 3-D graph the organization would fall under the product differentiation and customer responsiveness category. Even though the organization would like to see themselves in the shopping center of these two categories, realistically, they were not, when this article was written. The fictitious character states th e organization was functioning vertically in all divisions, which do it difficult to focus on the customer and created inefficiencies in development (p10). With this being said, they would fall closer to the axis between the two categories on this chart.Before the reorganization, the business strategy, organization strategy and learnings strategy were not aligned. The organization was running like a manufacturing company, internally cerebrate (p11). The mission of the organization that can be gathered from the case is that the organization wants to offer superior customer service, to create the most innovational and leading technology in an effective manner and sustain a thriving corporate culture. However, this mission was not achievable because they went to market vertically and that is not what their customers needed. The different structures of the organization worked independently which meant many inefficiencies and repetition in development (p11).The organization was not s et up to reach the business needs of superior customer service and creating innovative leading technology effectively. Furthermore, the data strategy was unattainable due to the organization strategy. In the instant of truth the organization decided to reorganize. They created five focus areas to focus the information strategy and product development. Furthermore, they split the organization into 3 main categories which focused on customers, go to market and innovation. The new strategy helped align the business, organization, and information strategy.On the strategic grid, CA Technologies was acting like a factory. They were not prepared to make changes that would be necessary for future(a) success such as creating a prosperous cloud system. They were working on their already existing product line and even showing signs of complacency with that product line. However, once they began reorganizing to a new strategy their organization went into the black eye phase, rending the bu siness into a customer innovation focused. This is where they began working on acquiring the proper structure to create a sustainable business in the cloud revolution. On the grid, the organization would fall in the top turnaround stage close to strategic. Their management is learning new ways to go to market and handle customers and at the same time the business is going to be shaped by their future innovation.Overall, I do not believe that the organization had a choice whether or not to cover the cloud. By 2011, they had already entered into the market and were seen as leaders in their already existing technology systems. If they backed out at this point, they may be viewed as not willing to move forward with the direction of future technologies. Furthermore, the market is fast and highly competitive, but CA Technologies has an advantage due to their rapport with already existing customers and their seniority in the industry. The cloud made the organization re-evaluate their stra tegy and now they will be a stronger organization in all categories due to their reorganization. The cloud is not going anywhere however their legacy way of thinking would not be pertinent if they did not move forward with cloud innovation.BibliographyCallaham, John. Microsoft 14 Million Jobs to Be Made via Cloud Computing. Neowin.net. 5 Mar. 2012. Web. 21 Sept. 2012. . CA Technologies. Annual Report. unrivaled Goal Our Customer Success. Islandia, NY CA Technologies, 3/2011. Annual Reports-CA Technologies. http//investor.ca.com/annuals.cfm CRN Staff. The 100 Coolest Cloud Computing Vendors Of 2012. CRN. 12 Mar. 2012. Web. 21 Sept. 2012. . DePena, Ray. 90 Cloud Computing Companies to make In 2011. Business Innovations. 1 Jan. 2011. Web. 21 Sept. 2012. . Tantow, Martin. CloudTimes Top 100 Cloud Computing Companies. Top 100 Cloud Computing Companies. 24 Apr. 2012. Web. 21 Sept. 2012. .