Computer Associates International Inc. (CA) is working on re-energizing its mainframe software business, with one of its ultimate aims to put the management of big iron on a par with what's already offered in the distributed systems world, according to a company executive.

The Islandia, New York-based software company is in the process of reinventing itself after being rocked by a series of financial scandals that led to the departure last year of its former head Sanjay Kumar and his indictment on charges of securities fraud.

IDG News Service sat down with Sam Greenblatt, CA senior vice president and senior technical advisor, at the Share user group conference Tuesday. Greenblatt joined CA in 1994 and works with the company's executive management team to help set CA's strategic technology direction. He was previously chief architect for the company's Linux Technology Group and continues to be strongly involved in the Linux community.

Greenblatt talked about CA's renewed focus on its mainframe business and the changes under way at the company. What follows is an edited transcript of that conversation.

IDGNS: How's work going with integrating the technology you acquired through the April purchase of Concord Communications Inc.?

Greenblatt: We had looked at both Concord and Aprisma, so it was really fortuitous for us that Concord bought Aprisma [in January]. Concord brings us the eHealth correlation engine, while Aprisma brings us network management. We have a white paper on our Web site on the [integration] road map and will announce more at CA World [due to take place in Las Vegas in November.] We've taken our head of engineering and moved him from Islandia to Boston to ensure the integration goes ahead.

IDGNS: What do you see happening with mainframe systems management?

Greenblatt: We don't like to say a mainframe is a mainframe. It's part of the enterprise and systems management has to cross all platforms. CA believes the only way systems management will work is through service-oriented architectures (SOAs), with an abstract layer underneath where you have mainframes and Windows and Unix [systems].

Where the mainframe has been in the last few years, it's really become holistic computing. We're trying to bring managing the mainframe to a higher level, to bring it to an equal level with other platforms. Managing mainframes is growing up from the commodity or platform level much more into the middleware [layer]. It will take a couple of years [for mainframe management to be on a par with distributed systems management]. We need open standards. We're very encouraged by things IBM's doing now.

We really want a network administrator not to worry about mainframes. When a system breaks, it breaks fast and hard. By the time someone realizes there's a system problem, it's [already] been diagnosed and fixed or the software has provided a suggested remedy to fix it.

IDGNS: What's CA got planned for the mainframe management space?

Greenblatt: Over the next six to eight months, you'll see us make some modifications to where we've been, for instance, in security. Encryption is absolutely critical. Privacy is no longer

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