On a summer's morning in the auspicious surrounds of Luttrellstown Castle, Charles Wang, chairman and chief executive officer of Computer Associates (CA), is doing another whistle-stop tour. The co-founder of the third largest independent software company - after Microsoft and Oracle - is on his first visit to Ireland. His trip coincides with the announcement of a doubling of CA's workforce in Ireland to 50.
Mr Wang is running ahead of schedule, which appears greatly to please him. By late afternoon he will be winging his way to Sweden for another whirlwind stocktake there is very little room for error. In fact he would be highly intolerant of foot-dragging in any shape or form. For more than 20 years he has stood at the helm of one of the most aggressive companies in the computer industry and has gained few friends along the way.
The secret to his company's success has been a policy of identifying ailing software companies, buying them out and shedding the workforce in droves until the profit line begins to appear again. This unpopular strategy has made CA into a $4.7-billion-a-year (£3.3 billion) company, which recently posted profits in excess of $1 billion. Last year CA recorded a five-year average annual total return on stock of 54 per cent, a better return than that of Microsoft, Coca Cola or Gillette.
Mr Wang says: "CA pursues a threepronged strategy. Firstly, internal development, we have developed more products than any other independent software company; secondly, the acquisition of new technology and people; and thirdly, integrating what we have acquired with what we have developed. And we'll continue with that same strategy."
Purchasing more than 60 companies along the way, the acquisition prong of CA's strategy spearheads the company's approach. Today, CA has 25 per cent of the US mainframe systems management software market, one percentage point behind the market leader, IBM. When it was founded in 1976, CA built its reputation on providing software support for the giant IBM mainframes used by big business. The arrival of the PC forced CA to reinvent itself as a company that could provide software solutions for the entire gamut of computers used by the corporate world, including PCs. It has done this by merging at a breakneck pace with software companies that have the products to add PC-based muscle to CA's software line.
Mr Wang has also established himself as something of a corporate guru, continually pushing the mantra: "Technology must serve business". He has adopted innovative management techniques to streamline cumbersome corporate hierarchies and written a book, Techno Vision. His own company, which employs more than 10,000 people in 40 countries, is a model of the flat structure Wang preaches.
Focusing heavily on "zero-based thinking", employees are encouraged to find new solutions to problems, instead of variations on traditional remedies.
"I try to tell business people who think the use of technology is only for accounting . . . to use it as a business enabler. It's all about adding value to the business and that's where the disconnect arises between technology and business," says Mr Wang.
Recently, CA turned its attentions to software development and possibly to quell critics' protestations that CA didn't have the brain power to produce its own products, the company launched Unicenter TNG.
A refined version of a product line CA launched in 1993, the innovative software runs on all platforms including Unix, Sun and NT servers. Its primary function is to ensure computers, networks and databases are kept running smoothly at all times. It can actually identify and alert systems engineers to problems before they happen.
In April, Mr Bill Gates announced Microsoft would be bundling the Unicenter framework with NT 5.0 servers the only application to be bundled as part of NT. Compaq also moved recently to integrate Unicenter into its servers.
The manner in which CA has evolved is an extension of Mr Wang's own personality. Born fourth of four brothers in Shanghai in 1944, his father was a judge of the Shanghai Supreme Court. The family were forced to flee to Hong Kong and then New York after the communist takeover of China in 1947. From the age of eight, Mr Wang grew up in the working class Queens borough of Hollis, where the family suffered a lot of racial prejudice. He determined early on always to be able to support himself and graduated from Queens College in 1967 with a teaching certificate and excellent carpentry skills. While looking through the jobs pages, Mr Wang announced to his mother he was going to be a programmer. When his mother asked "What's that?", he replied "I don't know, Mom, but boy, do they need 'em!"
He soon got a job as a programming trainee at the Columbia University Electronics Laboratory, where he met his lifelong business partner, Russ Artzt. After four years at Columbia, they moved to Standard Data Corp (SDC) where they almost single-handedly ran the department that provided software support for IBM mainframes owned by client companies. In 1979, SDC decided against a Swiss software company's offer to expand marketing efforts for its popular application program. Mr Wang saw his opening and bought out SDC's software division for a share of future profits and formed CA. He then convinced the Swiss company to sell him exclusive US rights to its program in return for 50 per cent of CA. This product-for-equity swap became the backbone of CA's expansion efforts in years to come. Mr Wang has little time for the faddish nature of the technology industry. He is resigned to the constantly changing landscape and says: "Software is software. We look at our clients whole enterprise and it has to be looked upon as if it were one system because that's the way you have to run it." If the value-added isn't there, forget it.
Mr Wang is renowned for banning email usage during peak hours in CA. "Email like most tools will be abused if you don't curtail it and put it into its proper perspective. No one can read 200-300 emails a day I don't care how good you are. They should be out there talking to clients."
CA's latest and highly publicised swoop was a hostile $9.8 billion bid for the computer services group, Computer Sciences (CSC), which was rejected in March. The thinking behind the deal was significant in that it represented CA's first attempted foray into the world of computer services. It has become apparent that CA needs to continue delivering service to customers each time it takes over new territory. Both IBM and Oracle have huge services arms, and now CA is coming round to the realisation that the next frontier that sets one business apart from another is its level of service.
"We're going to acquire a whole bunch of services companies. I've been in this business with CA 22 years and ultimately I have to deliver. Now we have a lot of services companies coming to us since the attempt to take over Computer Sciences and they're telling us we're better off, because their companies are better and cheaper than Computer Sciences," he says.
He adds: "I just want to keep having a good time building the company with the best people in the software industry. Don't let bureaucracy get in the way. Be self-motivated, a self-starter and have fun doing it."
