Computer Associates intends to become the No. 1 systems and security management vendor in the next 12 months and solidify its position as a market leader ahead of competition from HP and IBM.

After about five months on the job, President and CEO John Swainson Tuesday spelled out how CA will better address customer needs, narrow its product focus and potentially acquire more technology. As part of his effort to realign internal business units and refocus product direction, Swainson identified the two technology areas as the most ripe for new growth.

"We targeted those areas based on market share and revenue growth," Swainson says. "We believe that those markets will grow faster than the software industry as a whole and that we are positioned to grow faster then those markets."

Already a significant player in both markets, Swainson says CA will continue to expand its product portfolio through acquisitions such as the mainframe access management technology the company purchased from InfoSec last week. Identity and access management products will remain core to CA's eTrust security portfolio, which includes security event management, patch management, virus detection and other security management tools.

In terms of its Unicenter management software, the vendor says it will continue to provide tools to manage emerging technologies and move its customers closer to an automated, on-demand state of computing. Like competitors HP and IBM, CA introduced its version of an automated and intelligence data center a couple of years ago.

"Infrastructure management is one of the more challenging IT problems to solve," Swainson says. "The complexity continues to grow and it's still our vision, one that we share with others in the industry, to help deliver an infrastructure that could automatically reconfigure itself."

The difference between CA and competitors, Swainson says, is breadth of products with HP and better management tools with IBM. For example, HP remains weak in security management and has abandoned mainframe management. As for IBM, Swainson says CA dominates the desktops and provides more mainframe and Unix management capabilities.

The vendor also says it will remain committed to the mainframe. While others such as HP have determined not to focus on mainframes because it offers relatively flat returns in terms of growth, CA says the mainframe remains part of customers' enterprise networks. According to CA, mainframe management products generate "about 50% of our revenue at high margins and yields a steady cash flow stream that allows us to invest in innovation across the company."