Source: silicon.co.uk — CA World 2017 coverage.
CA Doubles Down on the Modern Software Factory
At its annual CA World 2017 conference in Las Vegas, CA Technologies used the stage to announce 20 new products and enhancements—what the company described as the largest single release in recent history. The announcements were framed around CEO Mike Gregoire’s long-running strategic vision: the Modern Software Factory, a model for building intelligent, secure, and automated software at enterprise scale.
Gregoire, who has championed the Modern Software Factory concept since joining CA roughly five years before the 2017 conference, addressed customers about the need to connect “ideas and execution”—using software to build on an organisation’s unique strengths before competitive pressures force the issue.
“We’ve long passed the point where enterprise software is used merely to drive efficiencies. The focus today is on innovating the next big shift for your company.”
Mike Gregoire, CEO, CA Technologies — CA World 2017
Key Announcement Areas
CA grouped its announcements into several capability pillars, each targeting a different layer of the software delivery lifecycle:
DevOps Automation at Scale
A new automation platform was introduced to help enterprises scale their DevOps practices using analytics-driven insights. The goal is to move beyond tool adoption and give teams the operational intelligence needed to continuously improve pipeline performance and throughput.
Microservices Management with CA Microgateway
CA announced CA Microgateway, a tool designed to deploy and manage microservices in minutes. As organisations decompose monolithic applications into smaller, independently deployable services, tooling that handles service discovery, policy enforcement, and API management at the microservice layer becomes essential. CA Microgateway was positioned to address exactly that gap.
DevSecOps: Security Built In From the Start
Several of the 20 announcements targeted the growing DevSecOps discipline—the practice of integrating security controls into development pipelines from the first commit, rather than bolting them on before release. CA’s new security products were presented as a way to improve security posture without creating friction that slows development velocity.
This reflects an industry-wide shift: traditional security gate reviews at the end of a release cycle are increasingly incompatible with high-frequency delivery models like continuous deployment. Shifting security left—earlier in the pipeline—distributes responsibility across development, security, and operations teams.
AI-Powered Mainframe Management
Despite the industry’s sustained migration toward cloud-native infrastructure, CA made a point of addressing its substantial mainframe customer base. New AI-powered tooling was announced to help mainframe operators proactively detect and resolve potential issues before they cause downtime, while also strengthening security on those platforms.
Mainframes continue to underpin critical workloads in financial services, insurance, and government sectors. Integrating AI-driven observability into mainframe operations aligns with broader AIOps trends playing out across the infrastructure management market.
The Modern Software Factory Framework
Across its announcements, CA consistently returned to the pillars of the Modern Software Factory: velocity, security, and performance. The framework positions software delivery not as an IT function, but as a core business capability—one that determines whether a company can respond to market changes faster than competitors.
“The ability to manage change, respond to new inputs or insights and pivot has never been more important. Our entire portfolio is designed around the pillars of the Modern Software Factory to increase the velocity, security and performance of the solutions and the apps that are critical to our customers’ businesses.”
Mike Gregoire, CEO, CA Technologies
Why This Matters for DevOps Teams
- Integrated toolchains: A vendor releasing 20 coordinated updates signals an effort to reduce integration overhead across the SDLC—relevant for teams managing complex tool sprawl.
- DevSecOps adoption: Security tooling designed to fit inside pipelines, rather than interrupt them, lowers the barrier to compliance for teams practicing CI/CD.
- Microservices governance: As microservice counts grow, API gateway tooling at the service level (not just the edge) becomes operationally necessary.
- Mainframe parity: AI-assisted operations for mainframes acknowledge that cloud transformation is incremental—many enterprises run hybrid estates for years during migration.
CA Technologies was subsequently acquired by Broadcom in 2018. Teams evaluating products announced at CA World 2017 should verify current product names, roadmaps, and licensing under Broadcom’s portfolio.