CA profits rise, with Army help

The U.S. Army helped CA Technologies Inc., of Islandia, show progress in profits, and in sales, in its report for the  second quarter of CA’s fiscal year 2011. The quarter ended Sept. 30.

CA made a profit of $222 million, compared with profit of $218 million in the same quarter last year. Its revenue was $1.11 billion this quarter, compared with $1.067 billion in the same period last year.

“Our success can be seen in our progress in new product sales and we expanded our footprint with 100 new major market accounts this quarter,” chief executive Bill McCracken said to analysts in a conference call. The comments were provided by a transcription service.

The key sales push for CA in recent quarters has been to nudge clients from standard info tech setups — with numerous servers and PCs with installed software — to virtualization and cloud computing strategies.

Looks like the Army liked CA’s sales pitch.

“Another proved point is our success with emerging technologies like virtualization management which are driving purchases across the portfolio,” McCracken said.

“For example, the U.S. Army made a significant investment across project and portfolio management, service assurance and virtualization management and automation solutions.”

Virtualization involves the use of large servers to run numerous "virtual" servers or desktops, running a variety of operating systems and software suites. This can reduce energy and maintenance costs, and takes up less physical space.

Cloud computing refers to flexible, cost-saving subscription plans allowing companies to use — and pay for — variable amounts of data storage, software and other resources over the Internet, as needed.

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