Keynote speech

Welcome to CA World

Every year, over 20,000 employees and partners of Computer Associates International gather in CA World, a major conference dedicated to the company’s software solutions. This speech was crafted for the eagerly anticipated keynote address presented by former chairman and CEO Charles B. Wang. In this speech, he outlines the state of the information technology industry, reviews new product announcements, and puts the software capabilities in the context of client solutions. Through it all, he mixes humor and pointed comments, and raises audience expectations for the conference events which will follow.
The speech, presented in 2000, is outdated now, but remains an example of a software industry keynote speech.

Scoping Document

Event: CA World 2000
Theme: State of the company
Place: New Orleans, LA
Speaker: Charles Wang, Chairman and CEO
Date: April 19, 2000
Audience: 20,000 Computer Associates employees and partners
Length: About 40 minutes, 3,840 words

Good evening and welcome to CA-World 2000!

I know that you expected some kind of crazy entrance and
I must admit, we did think about trying to top the motorcycle entrance of last year.

In fact, my special events people suggested that I get shot from a cannon but I was concerned they might miss! (LAUGH)

I asked them – what do you think I am – crazy?

Well, the fact is that it’s the world that has gone crazy as far as I can see.

Just look around. We have cyber terrorists shutting down the world’s biggest Internet sites.

We have hundreds of new viruses being invented every day. Do you know by the time this keynote is over there will probably be 100 new viruses in the world?

We have upstart dot.com companies terrorizing old economy companies – and giving fits to some of America’s most respected and successful Fortune 500 companies.

We have the Nasdaq behaving like a trillion dollar yo-yo.

Today, we are living in very exciting but very dangerous times.

I recently spent some time with a good friend of mine who also happens to be one of our largest clients. We were talking about how much the world has changed and he said something that absolutely floored me…

He said, “Charles, I’m scared…”

Now here’s a man who has seen everything, a man with an IT budget of hundreds of millions of dollars, armies of the smartest and highest paid consultants, an incredible staff of thousands of people… And he’s scared? (PAUSE)

If HE is scared, we should be hiding under the bed!

But like they said, you can run but you can’t hide. And like it or not, all of us are living in the middle of a revolution – the use of the Internet for business, or in other words – The eBusiness Revolution.

And just like the any other revolution that has come along over the past couple thousand years, the people who are swept into it have no choice.

For better or worse, it’s too late to turn back.

It’s much too big to ignore.

It’s much too powerful to avoid.

There’s only one question.

And that is the question that every single client has asked me over the past year. They get this look in their face, and they lower their voice, and they grab you by the arm and they say, (QUIETLY) “How can I survive this…?”

(SOFTER VOICE) “How can I succeed in this…?”

I bet that many of you are asking yourselves the same question. I know I do.

And though I don’t have all the answers, I do have a plan. I believe it’s a pretty good plan to not just survive, but to succeed and win, and I’d like to share it with you today.

In order to survive and succeed in this Revolution, you have to do these 2 simple things.

First, you have to move fast...

Second, you have to get it right…

This plan sounds simple, but it’s really hard. Because very often people think that doing it fast means NOT doing it right. But remember you have to do both at the same time.

Doing it wrong quickly is just as bad as taking forever to get it right. And getting it right is of little use if, by the time you’re done, the world has passed you by.

Look what happened to FreePC.COM…. Look what happened to the Lama Racing Association of America, the short-lived craze of self-teaching Home Dentistry Kits, The National Flying Schools for the Blind, the Federal Prison Tattoo Advertising Program, etc.

You all know what Amazon.com did. Amazon was the first in the business of selling books on the web and has been able to sustain its first-mover advantage. Everyone knows who they are. If you want to buy a book on the web, you go to Amazon.com.

But let me ask you a question. Who’s the number one auction site on the Web? (PAUSE)

It’s eBay, right? We all know that. Now tell me who’s the second most popular auction site? (PAUSE)

No one seems to know the answer to that one for sure. Everyone is trying to claim that they’re the number 2 auction site. Yahoo, Amazon, etc. all want to be in the game, but because eBay was first, they’re the one that people recognize first.

Being first on the Web gives you a tremendous edge, so you have to do it now!

Remember my plan, being first isn’t enough - you also have to do it right. Recognizing this can lead to tremendous success—and failing to recognize it can cost you dearly.

Let me give you and example of this. When Barnes and Noble, which is one of the largest U.S. traditional bookstore chains, was “amazoned” they responded by trying to do the SAME thing as Amazon. They also established a dot-com operation, BarnesandNoble.com. But this was a separate business from their regular operation. They failed to recognize that their existing brick-and-mortar business was a major business asset. They didn’t integrate it.

So when you order a book from BarnesandNoble.com, you can’t return it at a Barnes and Noble store. And you can’t order online and then pick it up at the store. You can’t even order a gift certificate for the stores through the web! Think about it—that would be such a differentiator against e-tailers like Amazon.com, but Barnes and Noble is missing their “clicks-and-mortar” opportunity. And as a result, Amazon.com held on to its lead.

But just because Barnes and Noble didn’t get it right the first time, we shouldn’t assume that the dot-coms always win. In fact, I believe that the most successful eBusiness eTailing model will be a hybrid model that seamlessly integrates Internet initiatives with brick-and-mortar investments.

Let’s compare what happened in the book selling business with how things went in the investment industry.

Here, eTrade was the first, and they got a lot of attention. Everybody was talking about eTrade as the big new player.

But look at what Charles Schwab did. They did not get intimidated. First, they responded quickly: although they were behind eTrade, they were not far behind. And then they exploited their greatest advantage, their existing business. They integrated their operations from end to end.

So if you are a Schwab customer, you can do exactly the same operations over the web, by telephone, and by walking into an office. There is no difference! The same accounts, the same transactions, the same balance.

And today, Schwab has become the leader, even though they were not first, because they also did it right.

So what does it take to do it right?

There are three practical steps that can help you to do it right:

First, provide the customer a unique experience.

Second, make the process seamless for the customer from the back-end all the way to its’ web presence.

And lastly, the platform must be reliable and secure.

Now, as I said, the first step is to provide the customers a unique experience. As you know, the web is extremely crowded, and it’s getting worse every day. There were over 3 million web sites at the start of 1999. Just a year later there are over 7 million, and the number continues to grow. So, if you don’t stand out, you might as well not be there.

Let’s think about what could make the experience unique. We can learn from thinking about how people interact.

If you have a conversation with me, or with a friend, that experience is unique, isn’t it? And it is because when we talk, the conversation doesn’t start over every time. If you have a friend who tells the same joke every time, you will soon be looking for new friends. But your typical web site acts like that. You get the same response, and the same set of information, every time. And it’s the same for every other consumer.

This is no good. We have to provide an intelligent eBusiness system that learns to distinguish between different individuals. And that learns from the behavior of the individual over time.

We call this Dynamic PERSONALIZATION: an eBusiness system that provides every customer a unique view that changes over time.

Let me give you an example of dynamic personalization that can even apply to everyday business. CA is right now working with Wal-Mart and Symbol Technologies to radically change the experience of a shopper in a regular supermarket.

Here’s how it works…

When customers enter a Wal-Mart store, they are issued a hand-held personal digital assistant with a built in bar code scanner. This hand-held device, known as a portable shopper, also uses wireless positioning technology to figure out the exact location of the shopper in the store. By the way, this hardware is manufactured by Symbol Technologies, which is a CA technology partner and the world’s leader in bar code scanning technology.

As the customers go through the aisles, they simply select items they want, scan the bar codes, and place them in the shopping basket.

When they are done shopping, they simply walk to the check out area. The entire system is wireless. As they leave the store, the retailing system computes their charges and issues a paper receipt. The customers can then be on their way.

You can immediately see its advantage. It eliminates the biggest complaint that shoppers have – they no longer have to wait in checkout lines. The shoppers love it.

But the biggest benefit by far is not so obvious.

The system is using CA’s Neugents that can detect extremely complex patterns in real-time, and can leverage hidden retailing connections.

The Neugents analyze millions of shopping experiences and understand the patterns of buying behavior. The Neugent dynamically processes what each shopper has put in their shopping cart and can predict what else they ought to buy.

For example, based on the items in the cart, the Neugent might suggest that this shopper should be buying red wine. Then, as the shopper walks by the wine aisle, it suggests “Would you like to visit the wine area on your left?”

Our tests have indicated that today, more than three quarters of the people to whom the Neugent suggests wine buy it! That is the result of dynamic personalization.

Obviously, the same technology can be applied to the Internet. Because the system keeps track of everything a user does and the Neugents can then create a unique personal experience for every user.

For example, imagine going to an insurance company web site to try to insure a new car. What if the system knows you and applies intelligence to offer you, the right coverage, at the right price, without you having to tell it what you’re looking for? CA is doing just that with one of the largest insurance companies in the world.

We’re using Neugents to determine the most appropriate and cost effective coverage for each individual, based on hundreds of factors, including their personal information, demographic information, financial situation, driving history, and geography. All within the blink of an eye – through the use of Neugents! And, we’re even able to predict how likely it is that the individual will actually accept the offer!

We’re also helping this insurance company retain customers. The Neugents automatically determine at-risk customers – those that have a high likelihood of switching to a different company. The Neugents then alert the insurance agent with the list of these customers. Not only that, for each of these customers, Neugents tell the agent what different policy to offer so that the customer will stay with the company.

What an amazing set of benefits for the business and the consumer – first for the business, the Neugents can automatically suggest the right policy to prospects increasing sales and customer base. Second and also for the business, the Neugents can identify at-risk customers and retain them. But ultimately, the most important benefit is for the consumer – who gets a better price.

That’s the power of Neugents! Neugents are unbeatable for dynamic personalization and their applications are limitless.

Another thing that makes the users’ experience unique and stand out from the rest is VISUALIZATION.

The best eBusinesses exploit visualization to create an environment where customers truly enjoy the experience.

The most obvious use is in a shopping catalog. Any catalog will have photographs of the products, like you see here. But in eBusiness, we can use the new technology to create a more compelling experience. This web site looks quite straightforward until you realize that the car is 3-D! You can turn it around, check it out from different views, play with it…

So that’s the first step in getting it right – use dynamic personalization and visualization to create a unique experience for the customer.

But is that enough? No, that’s only the first step.

The second step in doing eBusiness right is – make sure that the eBUSINESS IS SEAMLESS from the perspective of the customer.

The customer wants to deal with a single company, even though there may be several companies involved in the operation one way or another.

For example, when a business buys supplies from an office supply company, they don’t want to know that the warehouse is outsourced to someone else or that delivery is perhaps handled by Federal Express.

That may be true, but they only want to deal with the office supply company. When they ask about the delivery of their supplies, they don’t want to hear about Fedex, because they didn’t do business with Fedex. Their business was with the office supply company, and they only want answers from that company.

This is especially important in business-to-business situations. For example, if my company orders a thousand PCs from Dell, I don’t care whether one of their suppliers can’t delivery the latest RDRAMs. I also don’t want to know that if I finance that purchase, that financing will be done XYZ bank. My business is dealing with Dell, and that’s all I should see.

But as we all know, that’s not reality today. Today, the customer sees that many of these systems are fragmented. Today, nothing is seamless.

But if we do our jobs right, all the stuff that goes on behind the scenes will be hidden from our customers. We would have created a competitive advantage that would be unbeatable.

To meet this need, every business must integrate its Web-enabled and traditional business processes on a common infrastructure that it can manage and scale on a dynamic basis. Seamless integration from the web-browser to every aspect of eBusiness processing is essential.

Consider the challenges of American Hotel Register, one of the largest hotel suppliers in the world. American Hotel Register realized that they could increase customer sales and improve customer retention if they could do two things.

The first was to increase the size of each order and the second was to improve their customer service. So they decided to build a B2B extranet. But many of their business applications are mainframe COBOL/CICS applications. Their ERP system is AS/400 based. And their sales automation application is on Unix.

They have created their B2B application using Jasmineii Using Jasmineii they have integrated all their applications to provide a unique and compelling experience to their customers, while providing them with up-to-date information on inventory, order status, billing information, etc.

Additionally, they’re using Neugents to suggest additional purchase items for their customers, which has increased the size of each order. By bringing together dynamic personalization, visualization and seamlessly integrating all parts of their business, American Hotel Register is growing their business at over 25% in a stable market.

Let me tell you of another company – 1 Sea, which has built their entire B2B environment on Jasmineii and is also managed by Unicenter. 1 Sea is the first and only B2B Maritime exchange. The market for procurement, chartering, and shipping management is over half-a-trillion dollars a year! 1 Sea already has signed up over a dozen of the largest shipping companies in the world. Not only is 1 Sea doing it first, they’re also doing it right.

Ok, now we have talked about the first two steps – how to deliver a unique and seamless eBusiness experience. But regardless of how unique and seamless the experience is, it is no good unless it is available, performs well and is secure.

And this brings us to the third step – one that is obvious to all of us—and fortunately, this is something that we IT professionals know how to deal with. You are all experienced with managing your mission-critical IT systems. But the Internet makes it much harder.

Let me give you an example. One of the most successful retailers on the Web is eToys. Their environment is fairly complex. They are using dozens of Linux web servers. They have Solaris and NT systems to run applications and databases. They use database and application software from Oracle and Microsoft. They realized that they needed to manage the entire environment.

After doing a thorough evaluation, they found that the only solution that met their requirements was Unicenter. It gives them complete control over everything from availability to performance to traffic analysis. It manages the network, the web servers, the applications and the databases and the content. It has kept them running through the roughest holiday season so far. In December they had more shoppers in one week than in the whole year. And eToys has been highlighted as one of the best performing and highly available eTailers on the Web.

As you know, on the Internet, you need 100% availability. And you can get that only by predicting and correcting problems before they happen. Just like we talked about using the Neugent for business prediction, our clients now use the Neugent facility in Unicenter to predict and prevent, performance and availability problems.

And a key ingredient of management is security. Everyone is concerned about Internet security. Consumers. Businesses. Government agencies. Everyone. We all have to make sure that we do our part in making the Internet a safe place.

For example, we have all heard of the denial-of-service attacks earlier this year. You know these attacks were a wake-up call. But it’s just the tip of the iceberg because when it comes to security, you cannot have any holes in your armor. That’s why nothing but an end-to-end, cross-platform Internet security solution will do.

CA is in fact the market leader in Internet security. Our eTrust portfolio of tools and solutions includes everything our clients need to secure every aspect of eBusiness.

Now, ultimately security is not only about technology solutions or tools but it’s also about the use of that technology or equipment.

Let me tell you a story that illustrates what I mean…

For many years a married couple took their vacations in their summer cottage on the lake where the husband loved to take his boat out to the lake and fish and the wife loved to stay at the cottage and read.

He went out on the boat fishing all day while she stayed in the cottage reading. It was a perfectly satisfactory arrangement for both of them.

One day the husband decided to stay in the cottage cleaning the fish he caught the previous day.

So the wife decided to take the boat out to the middle of the lake and do her reading there.

She was enjoying her book when the fish and wildlife ranger boated up to her. The ranger saw all of the husband’s fishing equipment in the back of the boat and he said, “May I see your fishing license?”

The woman replied, “I don’t have one.”

The ranger said, “Then I’m going to have to issue you a citation for fishing without a license.”

“But I wasn’t even fishing,” the woman replied.

“Maybe, but you have all the necessary equipment,” the ranger replied, starting to write a ticket.

“If you do that,” the woman interrupted, “I’m going to accuse you of molesting me.”

The ranger was startled. “But I didn’t even touch you.”

“Maybe,” the woman replied. “But you have all the necessary equipment.” (LAUGH)

Remember eBusiness is not only about what technology you have, it is about how you USE it!

So, let me summarize for you the three steps that can help you do it right and be successful in eBusiness, you need to:

1. Use compelling visualization and dynamic intelligence to provide a unique experience,
2. Integrate all business systems for seamless eBusiness, and
3. Create a reliable and secure environment for safe eBusiness.

And, you MUST do all of this really, really, fast!

You can’t do this by patching together separate and unrelated technologies. You just don’t have the time!

That’s one of the reasons we acquired Sterling Software in one of the largest acquisitions in the history of software. They bring some key technologies in the areas of portals, intelligence and management that’ll help us continue to lead the way in delivering the complete eBusiness solution. I’d like to welcome all the people from the Sterling eStrategies conference to CA-World 2000.

So there’s the plan. It’s the survival of the fittest to win in the Internet/eBusiness Revolution. And remember the simple things.

Move fast…and…get it right!

So where do we go from here? What do we do?

When do we start moving fast and getting it right?

Well tonight is a good start…

We have a World Resource Center waiting for you that is filled with people and products and ideas and technology that will help you move faster than you ever have before.

We have a whole week of unbelievable keynotes – including John Glenn tomorrow night – presentations, courses, and demonstrations that will teach you how to differentiate yourself and your company.

You see, we are in this together.

For us to be successful, we must make you successful in the use of our technology. Together, we are going to not only survive this Revolution (PAUSE) we’re going to win!

I thank you again for being a part of CA-World 2000!

Back to Speeches list