Computer Associates start 'revolution'

"I want to unlock the value in our shareholders' value by focusing on joint-ventures with Asia's leading telcos, ISPs and service providers," the chairman of Computer Associates told some 2,000 people in his opening speech at CAWorld Asia held in Shanghai today. His partner companies include PCCW-HKT, India's Satyam Computer Services, Korea Telecom's Hitel, Shanghai Telecom, Taiwan's Acer, Singapore's DataOne and NTT Communications in Japan.

By bringing CAWorld to Asia, Charles wants to impress upon the audience the excitement of sharing and discussing his company's business. CAWorld expects some 4,000 guests from more than 10 Asian countrie at the three-day event held at Shanghai International Convention Centre.

Wang cited the Application Service Provider (ASP) market, in which customers access applications from a central data center and rent them on a per user, per month basis, as one example of how small and medium enterprises can make productivity gains of using eBusiness applications without the huge costs and effort required to own and manage it themselves. Market research firms have predicted that the size of this virtually untapped market will exceed US$5 billion by 2003.

CA, which has some 18 joint-ventures in Asia, recently spun off an independent company called iCan-ASP to manage this business worldwide.