CA this week unveiled three products and updated five others -- all of which are designed to help enterprise IT managers better manage and secure their environments. (See a slideshow of CA's new and updated products here.)
The technology development and product streamlining the software maker has been doing over the past few years is impressing industry watchers who say CA no longer needs to worry about past impressions of its business.
"CA went through a tough patch, but they bunkered down and got very serious about business, made smart acquisitions and spent time and money to integrate products and reinvigorate themselves," says Andi Mann, research director at Enterprise Management Associates.
Others say CA as a whole might not ever be able to compete with big-revenue companies such as HP and IBM, but that the company can compete with its technology -- if it stays ahead of customer pain points.
"CA is a $4 billion company, which is nothing to laugh at, but the direct competitors are much larger than that and CA needs to continue to evolve their approach to managing a highly distributed environment to better compete," Hurwitz says. "The thinking around managing complex environments is changing. All the management vendors need to stay ahead of that thinking."
