Compared to a lot of tech conferences, CA World 2016 was surprisingly sedate. For a start, there was a distinct lack of outright evangelising, but on top of that, there were a lot of developments that the company made a surprisingly small deal of.
While there was a reasonable amount of new and updated products announced at the conference, one of the most interesting things the company talked about was its in-house accelerator programme, adopted as part of CA's acquisition of Rally. Perplexingly, however, the company only devoted a small section of the keynote to talking about it.
As with last year, digital transformation, agile and DevOps were strong areas of focus, which offers encouragement that the company is committed to these areas of its business. Practical use-cases were on full display, with CEO Mike Gregoire highlighting customers including CNN, GE and Virgin.
Some events were less industry oriented though. A particular standout was a panel discussion with commander Scott Kelly and other space industry figures, and while it had little to no bearing on CA's business model, it was a lively and highly entertaining discussion that was met with great approval from the crowd.
CA has largely flown under the radar over the past few months, and although it has made several smart moves such as the acquisition of open-source performance testing tool BlazeMeter in September the company has not made much of a fuss about its news over the past year.
I would like to see the company trumpeting its successes more in the next twelve months and it definitely has things to shout about. One thing that caught our eye in particular was the diversity and education initiatives that the company is involved in. It's a very worthwhile cause, and one that CA would do well to make more of a song and dance about.
In terms of strategy, it seems like the company is fully committed to its current business focuses of agility and digital transformation, which will likely serve it well. As more and more businesses start exploring the area, positioning itself as the leader in this particular space will likely give CA a strong advantage.
