CA this week is making several announcements in two key technology areas for the company: security and management, and the slew of software upgrades has people talking (see slideshow).

Industry watchers and customers seem bullish that CA has recovered from any real or perceived setbacks the company suffered earlier in the decade when accounting scandals wiped out the executive management team and caused talk of unsatisfied customers to escalate. The work CA has done over the past few years, since CEO John Swainson took the helm, is winning over customers as well as industry watchers, who say there was never any real threat that CA would go away.

"I don’t buy that the status of the big four [management vendors] is going to change substantially," says Andi Mann, research director at Enterprise Management Associates. "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."

Some customers realize CA's corporate reputation was on the line for several years, but report they didn't feel the impact in customer service or technology development. Harry Butler, IT project manager at Elbit Systems of America, a defense manufacturing company in Fort Worth, Texas, dismisses talk of CA's comeback - mostly because in his opinion, the company never went away.

"I don't look at CA in terms of the internal politics. I've always wanted good service and technology from the company," he says. "Since all the scandals, the customer support and service has only gotten better because they are listening more and taking what customers say into account when developing products."

Butler says he is about to begin a beta deployment of one of the three new software applications CA introduced this week: Software Compliance Manager. The application matches licenses to discovered software assets to determine compliance status and ensure license uses aligns with license payments. The software can help companies identify under-used licenses and eliminate potential cost and compliance problems due to inappropriate use of software licenses. CA also debuted Security Compliance Manager and IT Process Manager applications.

Denise Dubie is senior editor with Network World.