It is difficult to unsettle William E McCracken, the CEO of CA Technologies, formerly CA, Inc and Computer Associates. He even seems unruffled when the discussion veers around the company?s past chairman & CEO, Sanjay Kumar ? who was sentenced a 12-year prison term in November 2007 for a securities fraud and obstruction of justice. Instead, the 67-year old McCracken is working overtime to give new direction to the company. The name change and a new business focus signals a broadening of the company?s strategy beyond its core franchise of mainframe software into new tools that help enterprises manage their technology in what the industry calls the cloud. In a conversation with Sudhir Chowdhary, he talks about the rationale behind the name change and the company?s new growth strategy. Excerpts:

CA was in the news for all the wrong reasons in the past couple of years. Do we see these branding attempts as a means to get over the past?

Those times are long behind us, and neither we nor our customers dwell on the past. Our growth strategy is transforming the company, building on our heritage of managing and securing information technology and extending that into new areas like software-as-a-service, virtualisation management and cloud computing. With the adoption of CA Technologies, we are communicating to the market that our core capabilities that customers have trusted for over thirty years are stronger than ever, and that we can also help them to deliver more flexible IT services through the cloud and SaaS.

Don?t you think the technology matrix of tech majors will continue to shift to Asia Pacific, with countries such as India contributing a larger chunk especially on the R&D front?

India is a growing and dynamic IT market. There will be a great deal of opportunity in the coming years. We have invested significantly in R&D via the India Technology Centre in Hyderabad. We also see strong growth across Asia and in Latin America, and are investing there.

Have you seen a recovery in tech spending yet? What will be your strategy to target markets like India?

We see positive signs of recovery in different markets around the world ? including India. However it?s difficult to make any conclusions at this point about the future of the economy. A view to growth is a key aspect of our strategy. Today the US market contributes 55% or our revenues with 45% coming from the rest of the world. I expect to reverse this ratio in the coming years. With that in mind, we have created a group called Growth and Emerging Markets under the stewardship of John Ruthven. India is a part of the GEM business unit.

Specific to India, 2009-10 was a year of strengthening our sales force. We grew our sales headcount in India by 20%. We are increasing our coverage of the Indian market, especially across the government/public sector, telecommunications, defence and financial services verticals.

But that is just one part of the story. The India Technology Centre is the largest within CA anywhere in the world with about 1,600 employees. Our additional $30 million capital expenditure on the facility which has the capacity to house another 1,000 employees should be ready in the third quarter.

How has the slowdown impacted the enterprise IT software management market for CA globally?

I am pleased that throughout the economic downturn, CA has held up remarkably well. It had has a lot to do with what we provide our customers. Our software is ?must have? instead of ?nice to have? if customers want to maximise the effectiveness and efficiency of their IT infrastructures.

Is CA open to acquisition of Indian IT firms?

We have built products from the ground in our facility in Hyderabad and have acquired a number of companies over the past year to support our strategy focusing on fast growing markets. We are open to acquisitions anywhere in the world provided these potential acquisitions are in line with CA Technologies? stated strategy and growth imperative.