CA Technologies sees a bright spot in staff-driven startup projects

BENGALURU: CA Technologies has been around since the old mainframe days. Nearly four decades and more than 100 acquisitions later, the application software major is encouraging employee-driven startup projects under its startup accelerator programme.

There are more than nine projects from this programme which CA, formerly known as Computer Associates, is using as solution for its global customers.

In an exclusive conversation, the New York-based company’s chief technology officer, Otto Berkes, who leads the innovative incubation project, tells ET how his learning from creating ‘Xbox’ and ‘HBO Go’ helped bring this about.

The entrepreneurs at CA, along with their development team in India, have so far created around many platforms which facilitate automated project management tools, visual modelling, tool chains to speed up production, quicker solutions for coding, self-learning maps, virtual devices for IoT developers, and intelligent monitoring tools. One of the first projects to come out of the accelerator programme was ‘Project Jarvis’, an analytics technology stack to provide businesses insights on applications usage.

According to Berkes, the incubation programme didn’t come up suddenly. Things started to move towards it with the acquisition of Rally Software in 2015. Then came Berkes’ hiring.

At CA, Berkes said, an employee can pitch a startup idea with details on end customer and what is being solved. If the idea is appealing, it gets passed within half an hour. "After the initial rounds, we allow the employees—who are now founders—to move out of their current role; allow funding and legal help if required. We are hoping for many internal startups to come up for a better CA future," Berkes said.

He said the majority of the ideas will take time to become full-fledged solutions, while pointing to Waffle.io, one of company’s most mature startups projects. "We have been open minded in our approach, and instead of buying, we try to focus on our employees who build these amazing startups."

For Berkes, who has a background in computer graphics and has been an integral part of the team which created Xbox and HBO Go, starting an accelerator and leading innovation efforts at CA has been a gradual progression.