CA Technologies, a leading IT management software and solutions company, has decided to spend $600 million on R&D (research and development) during the current year with focus on becoming one of the top companies in cloud computing and virtualisation management segments.
The company has set aside another $500 million and is on the look out for mergers and acquisitions of technology companies “that can bring in new technologies”. CA Technologies claimed that there were about 250-300 companies, including public and private firms, across the globe on its radar.
The New York-based company has opened a state-of-art India Technology Centre at Hyderabad, with over 2.5 lakh sq. ft. built area involving an estimated $30 million investment. The new campus has the capacity to house an additional 1,000 members on top of the current headcount of 1,600 and the single largest R&D facility expected to develop about 30 per cent of the company's global products. Chief Executive Officer William McCracken told reporters that the technology provider, with 55 per cent revenue from North America and 45 per cent from the rest of the world, was focussed on reversing the trend. It had decided to make substantial investments in the emerging markets, BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) countries in particular, with a strategy to lead the virtualisation management and cloud computing segments.
“Cloud computing is rapidly growing and we are in a good position to move into one of the top positions. This is the primary area,” he said. The company was aiming at developing technologies internally and created platform for that. At the same time, the platform “will allow us” to bring technology from outside that could be integrated.
Asked about U.S. President Barack Obama's statement on banning outsourcing which States like Ohio had already adopted, he said CA Technologies would not be impacted by the move as “we don't provide services”.
On the significant reduction in the IT spend, he said while the IT spend worldwide was around 7 per cent, CA Technologies was expecting to grow beyond that with major portion of the revenues coming from mainframe technologies.
