CA to take security solutions to SMEs

Infrastructure, security and storage management giant Computer Associates is tailoring its solutions to provide total solutions to the mid market and even SMEs, including those in the manufacturing sector. Tony Martin, managing director, points out that all-round IT infrastructure management is moving up the businesses agenda – and that with today’s complexity, full services, rather than best-of-breed, make a lot of sense. He also argues that none of the hardware or database providers are likely to provide overarching facilities for companies’ heterogeneous IT systems. CA, on the other hand, has built an enormous infrastructure management pedigree, hitherto among the large corporates, but, with recent acquisitions on the security side (like Pest Patrol and Netegrity) pointing more to SMEs. It’s also true that security is becoming even more of a hot potato as companies realise the need for multi-engine anti virus filters, spam filters, content filters, firewalls and the rest at several levels. As complexity grows, there’s likely to be a move to consolidate and look for service-based solutions in place of Google-based management. Says Martin: “It won’t be long before companies just buy packaged security… We’re developing what SMEs in the different sectors will see as total protection solutions.” And who knows, you could be looking at the Microsoft out of the box approach to protection. Much the same could then apply to everything from help desk to admin (for example, upgrade roll-out and delivery). “Companies need more automated solutions, more self help,” insists Martin.