More jobs likely to go at CA

Software vendor CA expects to continue restructuring its operations, which is likely to result in further reductions in its headcount, according to the company's chief financial officer.

"We do anticipate some additional restructuring in fiscal 2008," CA CFO Nancy Cooper said during a Wednesday conference call with analysts to discuss the company's financial results for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2007.

During the quarter, which ended March 31, 2007, CA completed the cutting of 1,700 jobs first outlined in August. On its Web site, CA puts its total workforce as of March 31, 2006, at around 16,000.

Cooper wouldn't be drawn on specifics except to note that CA believes there are still more areas in its business where the vendor could make "additional efficiencies." The company is hoping to begin fiscal 2009 having realized some US$200 million in annualized savings, she said, which would come from further restructuring.

"We're really systematically trying to go through our business to see if we can run it more efficiently," Cooper said. For instance, CA has been working to move its European operations away from being run on an individual per-country basis in favor of a more regional organization. That kind of thinking could also be applied to other areas of CA's business so they run in a more global fashion, she added.

CA plans to work in general terms on improving its international business, according to John Swainson, the company's president and CEO. In the fourth quarter of fiscal 2007, while total North American revenue rose 6 percent, revenue from CA's international operations fell by around 2 percent.

The company has already made significant management changes in Europe, its largest business outside of the U.S., Swainson said on the conference call, and he expects those changes to bear fruit shortly in terms of improvements in revenue.

Swainson reiterated his oft-repeated belief that transformation at CA is "a multiyear process," but he added that the company has made progress on several fronts over the past two years, notably in boosting the productivity of its salesforce to win more software and services business.

"There's clear evidence that customers and partners are seeing CA as a different company and someone they want to partner with," he said. Swainson expects the vendor's business service optimization and enterprise systems management software operations to continue to perform strongly and for both its security and storage software businesses to rebound and begin to grow again.