If you’ve ever verified a bank account online, you’ve likely used this company’s tech
Mike Gregoire is turning CA Technologies toward the cloud
Founded in Manhattan in 1976, CA Technologies is one of the world’s biggest software firms, with a $13 billion market cap and 2,000 employees in the metro area alone. In 2013 the company hired software industry veteran Mike Gregoire to oversee a turnaround. His mandate: lead CA into the future of cloud-based software services.
CA seems to be a major workhorse of the software industry. And yet it’s not well-known to the average New Yorker.
We’re an engineers’ company. If you’re in the business of computer science and understanding high-profile, mission-critical, very technical business applications, you would absolutely know who CA is. And if you’re in science, technology and math and looking for a job, the kind of work we offer is very attractive.
How would ordinary people run across your services?
Every time you use your banking card and “authenticate” using your password, you’re probably using our software. If you’ve been asked the name of your first dog or what street you grew up on, you’re probably bumping into our patents and our algorithms for fraud detection.
And if you’re building software at any company, you’re probably using our software every day, either for testing or to take what’s being written in code and get that into production.
CA brought you in as a change maker. What needed transforming?
For a long time in this industry, the model was to install software at the customer site, with very expensive implementation and a high degree of customization. Today customers want the burden of maintaining software to be on the vendor. We upgrade the software, and it’s running in our data centers. We’ve been morphing our company to look more like that than the traditional model.
But can a company as big and as old as CA grow in this new world?
Big is the new nimble. With the scale we have, when we change, it is going to be meaningful, and it is going to be real.
You’re saying the company’s size and age are advantages?
It takes years to build a very large global distribution and support network — and we already have it. Now the questions are: How fast can we move? How attentive can we be with customers? And how willing are we to change our business model and our attitudes?
Your previous jobs were in California. How are the two coasts different?
The West Coast is more creative, and the East Coast is more operationally sound. On the West Coast there are a lot of smaller startups where you have more opportunity to pivot. In New York you work with regulated industries that can’t afford mistakes. Now if I could get those two to work together, it would give us a great competitive advantage.
Why is it better for CA to be based here?
We have 11 of the 12 biggest banks as customers and 47 of the Fortune 50, which are all here. The way you build software today, you bring your customer into your development cycle. When you’re trying to get your customer to travel 3,500 miles and work with you for a couple of weeks, that becomes more difficult.
You’re a mountain- and road-bike racer. Does that help you in business?
When you’re on the bike, nobody knows you’re a CEO. You’ll have plumbers and hedge fund guys who are out there trying to kill you. And you’re not thinking about balance sheets; you’re thinking about surviving. It’s a great distraction, and it lets creativity percolate in the back of your mind.
A version of this article appears in the March 6, 2017, print issue of Crain’s New York Business
