If you don’t know the name Michael Gregoire, don’t fret — not many do. But that hasn’t stopped enterprise software giant CA in picking him to head the company. Reason? His cloud experience.
Those of you familiar with CA Technologies may recall the company has a long history of either promoting executive talent from within the company itself — or breaking them off of rivals like IBM.
This time around, however, the company is reaching outside the ranks.
CA recently announced that 46 year old Michael Gregoire is set to succeed current CEO William McCracken on April 1, next year. McCracken announced his intentions to retire six months back, after two and half year in the corner office as the head.
The outgoing 70-year old CEO assumed command back in 2010 after spending 36 years at IBM. He steered CA away from murky waters after the company was embroiled in accounting problems (that landed former CEO Sanjay Kumar in federal prison).
McCracken soon initiated a transition for CA whereby the company shifted its focus to cloud computing. As part of the transition, CA acquired eight companies — 3Tera, Nimsoft, NetQoS, Oblicore, Cassatt, 4Base Technology, Arcot Systems and Hyperformix — to further its own cloud ambitions.
McCracken is set to retire from the CEO post in January and step down from the board of directors in March.
Michael Gregoire however, at 46, is comparatively young. He most recently served as the CEO of Taleo, the cloud based talent management service which was acquired by Oracle in February this year for a tidy sum of $1.9 billion.
Over a seven year period, Gregoire took Taleo from $78 million to $324 million.
Nevertheless, with decreasing numbers at CA, the new head most definitely has his work cut out. CA Technologies is a company in transition, and it will be interesting to see where its new cloud specialist leader takes it when he joins the company on January 7, next year.
