Originally reported by cloudpro.co.uk, November 2017.
CA Technologies Bets Big on DevOps, AI, and Analytics at CA World 2017
At its annual CA World 2017 conference, CA Technologies announced more than 20 new and updated products spanning multiple business verticals. The release wave concentrated on DevOps tooling, automation, security testing, microservices management, and machine-learning-powered analytics—areas the company collectively frames as the foundation of a modern software factory.
CA president and chief product officer Ayman Sayed delivered the keynote, emphasising that the release cycle was driven by a focus on usability and faster time-to-value:
“I am particularly happy and pleased, and very excited, about our ability to make the products easier, more intuitive to use, and simpler. This speeds up time-to-value, the time it takes you to get a POC going. We’ve invested heavily in try-and-buy, in quick time-to-value, and if you look at the number of enhancements we’ve offered, several of them are in this category.”
Ayman Sayed, President & Chief Product Officer, CA Technologies (speaking to Channel Pro)
DevOps Tooling: New and Updated Products
DevOps was the most prominent theme of the release, accounting for three entirely new products and four significant updates. Key highlights include:
- API Testing for BlazeMeter: New API testing capabilities integrated into CA’s cloud-based continuous testing platform, extending BlazeMeter beyond its load-testing origins.
- SaaS-Based Application Performance Management (APM) Console: A new customer experience and APM dashboard delivered as a SaaS offering, aimed at giving teams a unified view of application health.
- DevSecOps IDE Integration: New tooling for testing code security directly inside the integrated development environment (IDE), enabling teams to shift security checks left into the development workflow rather than treating them as a release-gate activity.
The new capabilities build on strategic acquisitions CA completed in the preceding year, including Veracode (application security testing), BlazeMeter (continuous performance testing), and Automic (IT automation and release orchestration).
Microgateway: Rapid Microservices Deployment for Legacy Modernisation
CA also highlighted its Microgateway product, which the company described as award-winning at the time of the announcement. The Microgateway is designed to let organisations rapidly deploy and manage microservices alongside existing legacy systems—providing a route to incremental modernisation without requiring a full rewrite of established infrastructure.
For DevOps teams working in enterprises with significant legacy footprints, tooling that bridges microservices architectures with monolithic backends is practically significant: it allows independent deployability and scalability of new capabilities while preserving existing investments.
Machine Learning and Analytics: The ‘Modern Software Factory’ Vision
A recurring theme across the new portfolio was the embedding of machine learning and data-driven analytics into existing product lines. CA positioned these capabilities as the intelligence layer that differentiates a traditional IT organisation from what it calls a modern software factory—a highly agile, software-driven business capable of adapting rapidly to market change.
“Every business can be a modern software factory and achieve better business outcomes faster with the right intelligence. Today our portfolio is comprised of the tools and technologies that inject analytics and machine learning into our customers’ existing technology investments to compete and win in today’s fast-moving marketplace.”
Ayman Sayed, CA Technologies
Context: CA Technologies’ Acquisition-Led Portfolio Expansion
The CA World 2017 announcements reflected a broader strategy of growth through acquisition followed by deep product integration. By absorbing BlazeMeter’s continuous testing expertise, Veracode’s application security capabilities, and Automic’s automation and orchestration tooling, CA was positioning itself as an end-to-end platform vendor across the software delivery lifecycle—from development and testing through deployment, monitoring, and security.
For DevOps practitioners evaluating enterprise toolchains, the key takeaways from the 2017 announcement were:
- Shift-left security tooling (DevSecOps IDE integration) was becoming a first-class citizen in CA’s DevOps portfolio.
- SaaS delivery models were being prioritised to reduce time-to-value for enterprise teams.
- Microservices and API management tooling was being treated as essential infrastructure for legacy modernisation, not just greenfield projects.
- ML-assisted analytics were being embedded across product lines rather than offered as standalone add-ons.
Note: CA Technologies was subsequently acquired by Broadcom in 2018. Many of the products mentioned here are now part of the Broadcom Software portfolio. Readers should verify current product availability and naming directly with Broadcom.