Not too long ago, high-tech vendors would stop at nothing to keep their intellectual property private and separate from competitive offerings, arguing the proprietary technology gave them an edge over competitors. Now companies do all they can to communicate to customers and industry watchers how well their wares work with others. In today’s tech world, proprietary is passe and integrated is in.
CA Technologies this week at CA World ’10 rolled video commentary from technology partners Cisco, Citrix, Salesforce.com, VMware and Microsoft during the opening keynote address by Chairman and CEO Bill McCracken. The commentary from competitors proved two things to this industry watcher.
First CA Technologies understands that industry movements such as cloud computing, or paradigm shifts as some are calling it, require myriad moving parts working in concert. That alone requires CA Technologies to open its APIs to others, in this era of cooperative competition.
“Cloud will forever change how we manage IT. In this new era, the entire Internet will be your data center,” Dr. Ajei Gopal, executive vice presidnet of CA Technologies’ Products and Technology Group. “Something big and important is happening in IT, a paradigm shift is under way. We see a historic opportunity in the cloud and we are investing today.”
Second the software maker realizes the onus of integrating multiple vendor wares to enable the dynamic environment required for cloud, and its enabling technology virtualization, should not be on the customer.
Technology partnerships also mutually benefit the customer and vendor because customers don’t want to or realize they simply can’t rely on just one vendor for all their technology needs. Working with a vendor that can point to partners capable of filling the gaps or of providing products or services already integrated with existing technologies helps customers more quickly realize ROI on their investments.
Customers on a panel moderated by Gopal during his technology keynote address supported CA Technologies’ premise of a “cloud-connected enterprise,” in which the company works with customer to guide them in incremental steps as they move to the cloud.
“If you are not already down this path, you are already behind. CA is down this path,” said David Guzman, CIO and senior vice president of Global Technology Solutions at Acxiom.
And as CA Technologies works with partners to deliver products to enable cloud computing to remain competitive, some of its customers realize they must partner with CA to enable their cloud computing plans — or they risk losing a competitive advantage in their respective markets.
“If they don’t jump on board, they will be affected by lagging competition,” said Jack Story, CTO of Infocrossing.
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