New CA Technologies CEO: Who Is Michael Gregoire?

CA Technologies (NASDAQ: CA) has named Michael P. Gregoire as CEO, effective Jan. 7, 2013. He previously was CEO of Taleo (which Oracle acquired); executive VP at PeopleSoft (which Oracle acquired); and a director at EDS Corp. (which HP acquired). The common thread: Gregoire has enterprise, cloud, applications and IT services expertise at companies that have all been acquired. Hmmm…
The VAR Guy is not suggesting that Gregoire will put CA Technologies on a path to sell itself. Rather, Gregoire’s experience suggests that CA will learn a lot more about the SaaS market. Four prime opportunities:
CA has an extensive portfolio of enterprise management tools;
CA ARCserve is primarily an on-premises storage system but cloud opportunities have been emerging;
CA AppLogic is a cloud platform for rapidly deploying IaaS and SaaS offerings; and
CA Nimsoft is an IT management and service desk platform for MSPs and mid-market enterprises.
With that list in mind, The VAR Guy believes, Gregoire has the opportunity to fine-tune CA’s performance and really accelerate cloud- and MSP-centric opportunities.
Gregoire will succeed William E. McCracken, 70, who had previously announced plans to retire.
Under McCracken and former CEO John Swainson, CA stabilized its business, repaired some frayed partner relationships, and made acquisitions like Nimsoft and AppLogic for an “emerging enterprise” and cloud push. The results have been promising but inconsistent at times.
For its quarter ended Sept. 30, 2012, CA Technologies conceded that new product and capacity sales fell short of expectations. Starting Jan. 7, Gregoire will be responsible for re-energizing CA’s sales initiatives.