Case Study: CA, Inc.

CA Hires Experienced UNH-IOL Employees to Develop Network Management Software

The Challenge: Developing top quality, comprehensive network management software

CA, Inc. wanted to release a new version of its CA Network Management software, including significant enhancements to CA eHealth Network Performance Manager (NPM) and CA SPECTRUM Network Fault Manger (NFM), which enable organizations to improve the efficiency of managing their network and better support business services. CA solutions help customers to dramatically improve service performance, achieve network service commitments, avoid network outages to increase mean time between failure (MTBF), resolve network service problems quickly to decrease mean time to repair (MTTR), and reduce operational and capital expenditures.

CA turned to the UNH-IOL to recruit top-quality employees to add quality assurance and testing talent to its software engineering team. UNH-IOL alumni come out of their college careers with in-depth knowledge of IP network protocols and device configuration.

Both CA eHealth r6.1 and CA SPECTRUM NFM r9.0 were to include several new features that provide rapid time-to-value, including Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) support, an enriched, intuitive Web-based “one-click” interface, as well as new toolkits, monitoring, and reporting features.

"The experience of people we've hired from the UNH-IOL and the skills they bring to the table sets them apart," said Peter Clairmont, VP of Software Engineering. "We needed knowledgeable employees with real hands on experience in order to deliver on our promise of easy, comprehensive network management for our customers."

The Solution: Hire UNH-IOL employees graduating from UNH engineering programs

CA hired networking engineers directly from the UNH-IOL to be on its testing, QA, and development teams for both its CA eHealth NPM and CA SPECTRUM NFM product lines. "Engineering graduates who have worked at the UNH-IOL join our team with years of experience under their belt," Clairmont said. "Not just knowledge of protocols, but practical knowledge of how to configure and support those protocols on leading-edge networking equipment."

The UNH-IOL alumni applied their hands-on and practical laboratory experience with IPv6 and Voice over IP (VoIP) to all phases of CA eHealth NPM and CA SPECTRUM NFM development. UNH-IOL alumni understood both the fundamentals of networking as well as advanced concepts necessary to design, develop, and integrate new technologies into CA's products.

"We don't have to teach IOL alumni lots of fundamental and advanced networking knowledge – they ramp-up and contribute much faster," Clairmont said.

The Results: Faster Mean Time to Market

CA was able to release new versions of CA eHealth NPM and CA SPECTRUM NFM with a faster time to market. These new releases allowed its customers to improve efficiency of managing their network and helped customers dramatically improve service availability. CA's decision to hire quality employees from the UNH- IOL accelerated their entire process, helping to get their solutions tested, developed, and to market with assurance that their network management software would work together and work well with a wide range of networking technologies.

"Looking forward, we hope to recruit more experienced engineers from the UNH-IOL to help us compete in the network management market," Clairmont said. "As we add new features and protocols to new releases, having trained employees with hands on experience behind them is invaluable."

CA, CA eHealth Network Performance Manager and CA SPECTRUM Network Fault Manager are registered trademarks of CA, Inc.