CA Technologies sees “growth explosion” for service providers

CA Technologies is looking to a mid tier “growth explosion” with its service providers as it aims to help its channel partner weather the storm of slashed IT budgets.

According to Tamar Brooks, Sales Director, Alliances and Service Providers UK, CA Technologies, the firm is seeing its channel partners go through a shift towards providing service based sales, and this is helping drive growth with mid tier end users.  This is particularly effecting the managent software company’s managed service provider base.

“Where we see a growth explosion is in enabling partners to offer a service into that market place,” she told ChannelBiz.

“End users are looking at procuring differently and they are looking at procuring a service rather than an up front opex style procurement.

“ We are finding  that the end users buying patterns are changing. Traditional methods of selling licenses has been on a capex basis, the new way end users are looking to procure and consume is via a service.”

With end users increasingly shifting to cloud computing this is helping push toward opex-based service models, and CA also believes that the economic downturn has had an effect too on quickening the change.

“I think that the recession has had a lot to do with pushing people down this route quicker because end user are demanding a different service offering.”

Brooks say that while partners are being affected by the recession, it is doing its best to protect its partners from the worst of it.

“CA has some very strong recession-proof technology because it enables end users to reduce costs, to standardise, enabling them to be more agile, enable the move to cloud in a cost effective manner,” she says.

“We actually help customers save money,” Brooks says,  “because of that we are in a good position, and partners are able to bring this to a challenging market.”

This involves CA changing the way that it licenses, prices and supports its service providers, so that they can offer licences that are in line with the service model, Brooks says.

“As they sell their services and licence out to end users, they pay CA on an incremental basis.”

Despite the tough times, CA says that there are opportunities for the channel, and having invested heavily in acquisitions of cloud computing firms over the past couple of years, it is clear where the main opportunity lies for CA’s partners.

According to CA’s research into cloud uptake, over two thirds of EMEA partners predict an increase in cloud expenditure over the course of this year.

“I really do see the cloud as a huge opportunity for the channel, whatever the route to market, because end users need this.

“IT departments are also facing pressures to do more for the business and to be more agile, to be able to scale at pace.   CA’s technology will allow them to do this, and we see the cloud as a way of doing that.”

With the recession and the ‘new normal’ of decreasing IT budgets, it provides a way for its partners to over cost efficiency to end user customers.

According to Brooks the way to do this in a “cost effective and very quick time is with cloud”, whether that be private, hybrid or public.

“This is where the channel can absolutely add value to their end users.”