CA has Wily plan for app management

With plans to pump up its application-management software, CA last week inked a deal to acquire Wily Technology for $375 million.

CA says it will use Wily Introscope technology - which provides transactional-management capabilities for packaged applications, such as SAP, PeopleSoft and Oracle, as well as homegrown and Java 2 Platform Enterprise Edition applications - to augment CA's weaker application-management software within its Unicenter suite.

"In Gartner's Magic Quadrant, Wily is positioned as a leader for application management. CA's position is in the area that I like to call the slugs," CA President and CEO John Swainson said in a press conference call last week.

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With plans to pump up its application-management software, CA last week inked a deal to acquire Wily Technology for $375 million.

CA says it will use Wily Introscope technology - which provides transactional-management capabilities for packaged applications, such as SAP, PeopleSoft and Oracle, as well as homegrown and Java 2 Platform Enterprise Edition applications - to augment CA's weaker application-management software within its Unicenter suite.

"In Gartner's Magic Quadrant, Wily is positioned as a leader for application management. CA's position is in the area that I like to call the slugs," CA President and CEO John Swainson said in a press conference call last week.

The buy will help CA better compete with IBM Tivoli, Mercury Interactive, Quest and Veritas (part of Symantec) for application-management dollars. Gartner forecasts that new license revenue for application-management products will exceed $1 billion in 2007 and reach nearly $1.4 billion by 2009.

Swainson says Wily, a privately held company, reported about $53 million in revenue for 2005, and Wily's revenue grew by 48% in 2004 and CA expects it to grow by 75% in 2005. CA, which reported more than $3.5 billion in revenue for fiscal 2005, expects Wily to contribute $72 million of revenue in CA's fiscal 2007.

Industry watchers say the deal, which is set to close within 90 days, is positive for both companies, if CA can keep Wily's technology moving forward and customers happy with development efforts.

"It's a good deal, but CA must prove to Wily customers that it will continue to invest in Wily's technology and sales strategy, which was heavily driven by partners," says Stephen Elliot, a senior analyst with IDC. "Wily's technology is very solid, and the sales execution was strong. However the larger Unicenter sales teams must come up to speed on how to position the application-management technology."

CA will sell Wily's Introscope application-management software side by side with its Unicenter products. A CA team has been established to deliver a product-integration road map, expected about 30 days after the deal closes. CA says it hopes to retain executives and most of the 265 employees at Wily. CA estimates that there are 100 customers among Wily's more than 450 clients that overlap with CA's.

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