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Thinkesgroup makes the papers and a great article on Computer Associates.Young Bucks
CA dispatches quartet of under-40 execs to grab Asian market share
newsday.com
by Mark Harrington
Staff Correspondent
Shanghai, China YOU WON'T FIND the name of many 27-year-olds on the tip of the tongue of billionaire Charles Wang.
But ask the chairman and founder of Computer Associates International Inc.
who will serve as the next generation of leaders for the world's third- largest software company, and the name Toby Weiss leaps out without hesitation.
So it's little surprise that Weiss, a former intern who went on to develop CA's first company intranet, has been entrusted with a major chunk of CA's
critical operations in Asia. He's already a senior vice president of CA's field-services group, responsible for CA's largest Asian market of Japan, and it's
clear that the experience he's building here is grooming him for a higher place.
And he's not alone. At a time when other software firms are moving to capitalize on long-established positions in Asia, Computer Associates-an
acknowledged latecomer-is using a combination of crafty entrepreneurial marketing and young legs in grabbing for its share.
CA's highest-profile executives in Asia are nearly all under 40 years old, and most are of Asian descent. Despite their relatively tender ages, many have
proven projects behind them either at CA's Long Island facilities or other stateside facilities.
For a company that has seen its share of executive flight, having Asia as a testing and breeding ground for young talent can be quite effective.
"They're all self-starters and self-motivators who are not afraid to take a chance or make a mistake," said Wang, who with Russell Artzt started CA on a
shoestring from a tiny Queens office a quarter century ago.
The cultivation of a home-court advantage here comes via the 26 joint ventures CA has established in this market with a who's who of industrial
conglomerates and government entities, such as Taiwan giant Acer Corp. and Shanghai Telecom.
After the market was ripe, no one more recognized the importance of this market, or moved more swiftly to capitalize on it, than Wang himself. A native
of Shanghai, Wang opened the door to Asia for CA during a 1995 trip to his former hometown (his first in 40 years). Among CA staffers who
accompanied him, the trip has become something of a legend.
For Wang, it represented far more than a homecoming. While the importance of Japan had already been established for his technology company and
others, it was becoming increasingly clear that other Asian nations were rushing to catch up. By moving quickly to establish joint ventures in China, CA
could pair with local companies and government entities who knew the market-even as the company helped to influence and build a technology
infrastructure that it knew could one day create vast markets for its products.
Though Wang acknowledged those joint ventures haven't completely met expectations, he is far from throwing up his hands on any market. Indeed,
one of the reasons he cited for passing the chief executive reins to Sanjay Kumar this summer was to continue a deeper involvement in Asia while
Kumar continued with day-to-day operations.
Asked during this month's CA World Asia conference which nation's market was most important to CA, Wang showed a form of diplomatic charm that
many say has opened doors here. "That's like asking which of my fingers is most important, or which of my children," he said.
James Miller, editor of CIO-Asia magazine, a publication that targets chief technology officers, said it isn't clear how strong CA's position is in China.
But he added, "It really helps that it's Charles Wang, and that he's here." That the company held its first CA World conference outside the United States
in this city was not only a diplomatic nod to the importance of a sometimes-battered market, but reflective of CA's own need to create a larger-than-life
presence while there's still share to grab.
So it came as no surprise that the company's team of young executives were taking full advantage, racing among meetings and conducting
conferences like fishermen who know precisely when to drop a net.
Ven Subbarao, CA's senior vice president, South & Southeast Asia, suspected he had a future at CA when he sent letters to dozens of companies on
finishing his master's degree from Arizona State University 12 years ago, and only one responded.
"One day, Charles Wang just called me. He told me to fly right to New York," said Subbarao, 38, who seems anything but overwhelmed despite a to-do
list that includes overseeing five joint ventures and the entire region of India and Southeast Asia. He still maintains a home on Long Island.
"I saw him [Wang] as an entrepreneur," Subbarao said. "It's one of the things he looks for in other people. Unless you have that instinct, it's difficult to
play in this market and be successful." Given what he began with on his arrival at CA in Asia in April, 1998, it's clear Wang saw a kindred spirit in
Subbarao. The company had a single office with a handful of employees, and worse, companies in India just didn't get its business model.
"No one thought it made sense to pay for licensing software," Subbarao said. "It's very difficult to position a product and license it for a fee in a place
where manpower is so affordable. They didn't see software automation as something viable. We had to show them." In addition to the five joint ventures
located in India, CA now has 400 employees and 120 major clients. Subbarao has moved between two countries and among three cities and six houses
in the past two years. He now lives in Singapore.
And what about the Long Island home? "I don't know when I'm going to be back," he said.
At 29, Jianbing Duan is senior vice president of CA's Asia joint-venture operation, which means spending nearly as much time in the air, traveling about
the world's greatest land mass, as on the ground.
"Sometimes, you don't have time to relax," said Duan, who serves on the board of many of the companies and who is reported to by 25 executives of
these companies. For Duan, navigating the intricacies and regulations of the dozen or so companies he operates in is key.
"You've got to be able to adjust to those thing," he said.
Duan, who served six years on Long Island working with the former Cheyenne Software, is no stranger to the practice of taking out a client after work
and returning to the office at midnight. It's something he sees all the time, in CA offices in Korea and Japan in particular.
"We've built 20 companies in two years," Duan said, adding his job is to get them "listed" for public offerings.
Cliff Yung, 39, spends nearly all his time in China. Covering a region that includes Hong Kong, Taiwan, mainland China and Korea, the senior vice
president speaks with an intimacy of the market that makes it sound as contained and accessible as the Mid-Atlantic states. It's not. And yet it holds as
much or more promise than any in which CA operates.
Yung's region is mentioned frequently as CA's fastest-growing business from a percentage standpoint, although CA officials generally acknowledge that
the revenues don't amount to all that much when compared to the $2 billion or so a quarter CA bills in North America.
Like India, mainland China is beginning to "understand the value" of business infrastructure software, after years of assuming it simply came as part of
a hardware package. That's helped put CA on the map here. But the pure need for these software solutions has helped as well.
Since China didn't have much of a telecom or technology infrastructure in place before the 1990s, it has not been restrained by older systems it was
forced to update.
Yung, who joined CA 12 years ago in its Hong Kong office, set up its Taiwan operation in 1992 and was assigned to mainland China in 1995. He has
grown that three-person staff in Taiwan to some 250 in five offices throughout China.
"I'm getting used to setting up companies," he said. "It's very normal to me. I say, 'Let's build an industry, a company here.'" Weiss is used to building
things where there was little or nothing, too. He found himself on a fast track after an idea about putting a technical marketing presentation on a
universally accessible company network eventually led him to create what has become the company's internal intranet.
A precise thinker and speaker, he parlayed that into a job overseeing technical marketing in the Northeast when, at a company function, he and his
then-girlfriend got into a discussion with Artzt about Japan. Artzt had heard that Weiss's girlfriend had once lived there.
"He asked her, 'Do you want to go back?'" Before Weiss knew it, he was engaged and on his way to Tokyo. Weiss has done so well in that market that
six months ago, when Wang was asked to list the next generation of leaders at CA, he mentioned Weiss first. Japan, despite a competitive
environment, is CA's largest market in Asia, with 100 percent growth in the past year alone, Weiss said.
CA's efforts in Japan are getting mixed reviews.
"In Japan, CA is a very new company," said Shigeru Oyama, vice president and general manager of NTT Communications' E Platform Services
company, which is using CA software to develop its business services. "CA was a very good partner for us to start those services." But not all are so
pleased. Harumi Ikeshita, an assistant manager for IT planning at Japan Airlines, said he's still attempting to work through pricing issues with CA
resulting from this year's acquisition of Sterling Software.
Despite the growth, Weiss acknowledged, "We still have a long way to go here," although he says he's proud of what the company has accomplished in
Asia.
"I've gotten to build something here," he said. "I have an engine running, but I need to plant a couple of more seeds. I want to know when I hand it off,
it'll continue to grow. In Japan, there's a saying, 'You want to hand off a rainbow.'"
TECH ALERT
Monty Phan; Mark Harrington; Pradnya Joshi
newsday.com
Aerospace, Defense Promoters To Merge With Local Tech Company Call it a sign of the times: A Long Island-based area aerospace and defense
industry promotion group will merge under an organization supporting local technology companies before the end of the year, the heads of both groups
said.
The Aerospace and Defense Diversification Alliance in Peacetime Transition, or ADDAPT, formed in the early 1990s to help maintain the region's
defense industry, will fall under the Long Island Forum for Technology umbrella when they merge.
LIFT, which supports economic development among local technology companies, already has voted for the merger, said Richard Turan, the group's
president.
Though ADDAPT has yet to vote, the board's chairman, Peter Rettaliata, and Turan both said the merger makes sense because of the overlap
between the two organizations.
Rettaliata said ADDAPT, a state-wide group, would retain its identity under LIFT, continuing to maintain relationships between aerospace and defense
companies.
-Monty Phan Hauppauge Digital's Products Make Your PC More Like a TV Hauppauge Digital Inc. rolled out two products last week at the massive
Comdex computer trade show in Las Vegas.
They include WinTV-HD, a $399 product that it says will allow users to watch HDTV on a PC resizable window; and WinTV-PVR, a $249 personal
video recorder that allows viewers to watch programs and record them onto their computers.
WinTV-HD doesn't require an internal cable connection to the graphics card.
The company said it's compatible with Windows 98, Windows Me and Windows 2000, and it comes with a remote.
WinTV-PVR allows users to hook their television cables into the backs of their PCs, archive video on the hard drive, and "burn" video content onto a
CD, taking over many of the functions of a television VCR.
"This appeals to everyone who wants to watch TV and have a little flexibility," said Kenneth Aupperle, the company president.
Hauppauge Digital's sales have been good for the past year, but profits remain lower than management had hoped, Aupperle noted. In part, this is due
to the weak Euro, but he said consumers have also been slow to adopt new digital devices.
Shares in the company were bumping up against $50 before the Web wipeout in April. Now they change hands for about $4.
-Mark Harrington Reports of Massive Layoffs At Wemedia Not What They Seem Sometimes a layoff is not always a layoff.
Last week, some Silicon Alley online news sites announced that Wemedia.com, a site dedicated to people with disabilities, was laying off nearly 330
people, leaving it with about 100 employees.
But officials from the company say that though its staff has been cut, those employees were primarily hired to help the company Webcast the
Paralympic Games held the last two weeks of October in Sydney. Some 4,000 disabled athletes from 125 countries competed in the Games.
Wemedia provided up-to-the-minute scores and other details for the Games and had to staff up "enormously," but knew that it wouldn't need everyone
after the event was over.
"Many of them were stringers," said Wemedia spokeswoman Caryn Kaufman. "It was always understood that it was temporary." The company has cut
back some full-time employees from the daily operations, but the Manhattan-based company continues to fully run its Web site and printed magazine,
Kaufman added.
-Pradnya Joshi ThinkersGroup.com Updates Its ThinkMotion Web Browser Great River software company ThinkersGroup.com has released an update
to its wireless Web browsing program allowing users to activate e-mail addresses and phone numbers directly from the mobile browser, even if the text
isn't linked. The ThinkMotion 2.2 version lets users dial or e-mail directly from the Web page they're viewing. Because there are a limited number of
wireless-enabled Web sites, the ThinkMotion program acts as a proxy, allowing users to access the entire Web from mobile devices. The ThinkMotion
program is available at www.thinkconnect.com.
-Phan TiE-New York Holds First Conference in Manhattan With the dot-com bust in full swing, there seems to be nothing attracting investors' attention.
But TiE-New York, short for The IndUS Entrepreneurs (with an emphasis on the connection between India and the United States), held its first
conference in Manhattan this weekend, which was expected to attract more than 200 attendees.
Among the areas that seemed promising even during the current harsher climate for e-companies: telecommunications, wireless start-ups and Internet
security. Computer Associates International's chief technical officer, Yogesh Gupta, was the keynote speaker of the all-day event.
-Joshi
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