No more major acquisitions expected at CA - for now

Stephen Withers
Tuesday, 22 November 2011 14:46

IT Industry - Strategy

Acquisitions are going on the back burner at CA Technologies, according to CEO Bill McCracken. But 'never say never' may apply.

CA Technologies has a long history of acquisitions, but the pace may be about to slow down. According to CEO Bill McCracken, the most recent acquisitions have been to support the company's entry to the cloud and SaaS markets, and resulted from 'build or buy' analyses that showed it would be quicker to buy in technology than to develop it internally.

But the current product portfolio "looks pretty good," he said, and so in the shorter term any further deals are likely to be relatively small acquisitions that will "tuck in" to the existing product range rather than taking it in new directions.

"Things can happen that you don't anticipate," Mr McCracken said during a media conference at CA World 2011, declining to rule out the possibility of a significant purchase.

He expects CA's organic growth to at least match the industry's growth rate (ie, somewhere in the mid-single-digit range) in the short term, and notes that its enterprise business is currently growing at around 12-14%.

"You can never discount the economy," he warned, but noted that the recession in some parts of the world is helping to drive cloud adoption, and spending is also moving towards things that allow organisations to make better use of existing investments, which is one of CA's specialties.

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