CA pushes into wireless, seeks Asian tie-ups

This partnership will allow IT administrators to deploy, manage and support the installation and upgrade of BlackBerry applications, files and operating systems, said CA president and CEO Sanjay Kumar at CA World eBusiness Conference and Exhibition in Orlando, Florida.

In addition, the technology collaboration will enable IT staff to use BlackBerry wireless handhelds to remotely manage enterprises' IT infrastructure, Sanjay added.

This announcement comes on the heels of recent partnerships with Nokia, Ericsson and Kyocera which aim to allow Unicenter customers to manage their IT infrastructure remotely, from mobile devices.

Combined, these initiatives form part of CA's push into a "whole new frontier of the wireless Internet", according to Sanjay, who expects the first of such wireless solutions to be available by September.

CA is also actively recruiting Asian partners in the mobile arena. "As wireless becomes more important in carrying data in Asia, we will support it," Sanjay said.

Specifically, CA is in talks with two wireless device manufacturers in Asia, one of which is based in China. However, Sanjay declined to provide details, apart from saying that the announcement can be expected by year end.

In January, Islandia, New York-based CA launched a US$100-million, 12-month advertising campaign as part of a major corporate re-branding strategy (including a new company logo) to reflect its new focus on e-business.

Besides Unicenter, CA's other newly rebranded product lines are Jasmine (for information management), eTrust (for security management) and BrightStor (for storage management).