be merged into this article . discuss proposed since october 2016 . ca technologies type public traded as nasdaq ca nasdaq 100 component s & p 500 component industry enterprise software founded 1976 ; 40 years ago 1976 as computer associates international inc. founders charles wang russell artzt headquarters 520 madison avenue new york ny 10022 u.s. 1 key people arthur f. weinbach chairman michael p. gregoire ceo products computer software revenue us 4.515 billion 2014 1 operating income us 899 million 2014 1 net income us 914 million 2014 1 total assets us 12.01 billion 2014 1 total equity us 5.570 billion 2014 1 number of employees 11 500 2016 2 website www.ca.com ca technologies formerly known as computer associates international inc. and ca inc. is an multinational publicly held corporation headquartered in new york city . it ranks as one of the largest independent software corporations in the world . the company creates systems software and previously applications software that runs in mainframe distributed computing virtual machine and cloud computing environments . the company had been a provider of anti virus and internet security commercial software programs for personal computers during its venture into the business to consumer b2c market today it is primarily known for its business to business b2b mainframe and distributed client server etc. information technology it infrastructure applications since the spin off of their security products into total defense . 3 ca technologies states that its computer software products are used by a majority of the fortune global 500 companies government organizations educational institutions and thousands of other companies in diverse industries worldwide . 4 ca technologies is also part of the clinton global initiative . 5 ca technologies posted 4.4 billion in revenue for fiscal year 2014 ending march 31 2014 4 and maintains offices in more than 40 countries . 4 the company employs approximately 12 700 people march 31 2014 . 4 ca holds more than 950 patents worldwide and has more than 900 patent applications pending . 4 contents 1 history 1.1 inception and early years 1.2 1980s 1.3 1990s 1.4 2000s 1.5 2010s 2 controversies 3 acquisitions 4 see also 5 references 6 external links history edit this section needs additional citations for verification . please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources . unsourced material may be challenged and removed . july 2013 learn how and when to remove this template message inception and early years edit the company was established by charles wang and russell artzt in 1976 . 6 under regulatory pressure in 1969 ibm announced its decision to unbundle the sale of computer hardware from its software and support services ; i.e. mainframe computers from computer programs etc. at this time the computer industry was dominated by mainframes and their related operating systems principally from ibm . the decision opened new markets to competition and provided an opportunity for entrepreneurs to enter the nascent software industry an opportunity charles wang along with his friend and business partner russ artzt exploited by creating a company to develop and sell ibm mainframe software so they developed several products for that market with modest success . in 1976 they obtained exclusive north american distribution rights for ca sort a sort merge copy and data management utility software program that helps mainframe computers manipulate data efficiently . the sorting product had previously been distributed by independent software vendor isv pansophic systems under the name pansort . ca sort was originally developed by a swiss isv named computer associates founded by sam goodner and max sevcik several years earlier . the product had found success in europe but sales in north america hadn t kept pace . wang and artzt established a new venture in partnership with the swiss company which they named trans american computer associates and went to market with ca sort along with their original products . ca sort s sorting algorithms and the product s performance mostly on the dos vs computing platform combined with modest pricing and the sales acumen of charles wang led to rapid growth in the large and lucrative north american market . helping fuel that growth was ca s entry to the dos vs enterprise storage management market with software products ca dynam t tape management system ca dynam d disk or dasd direct access storage device management and ca dynam fi dynamic file independence . another useful tool that brought os mvs sophistication to dos vs e environments was ca driver a job control language jcl management product . ca sort s primary competitors were syncsort from whitlow computer systems plus dfsort and sm 023 from ibm . synergy among ca s products became the consistent theme that brought competitive advantage and laid the foundation for the unicenter concept years later . 1980s edit throughout the decade the company grew rapidly via several strategic acquisitions cga computer s top secret product plus software makers capex corporation johnson systems flagship product jars value software flagship product dispatch and uccel corporation 7 among them . in recognition of his success in 1983 charles wang was given a software ceo of the year award . in may 1985 ca unicenter was introduced as an integrated collection of many of its recently acquired mainframe systems products . its sales often wrap & roll financial deals helped bring ca enough revenue and market share especially from existing customers converting from dos vse z vse today to os mvs z os today that ca was eventually able to acquire its archrival uccel corporation in 1987 . ownership of those industry standard flagship products ucc 1 ucc 7 ucc 11 plus acf2 made ca the largest independent vendor of mainframe infrastructure software and dominant vendor of os mvs security software with ca top secret 2 market share and ca acf2 1 market share . ibm s resource access control facility racf product held the 3 market share position . uccel s acquisition also made walter haefner that company s half owner at the time ca s largest individual shareholder a distinction he enjoyed until his death in june 2012 . 8 whereas ca s historical focus had been on system utilities including those for the vm cms z vm today mainframe platform the company also sought via its 1986 acquisition of software international to compete in the applications arena against dun & bradstreet s former market leaders management science america msa and mccormack & dodge m & d . ca also competed against microsoft and lotus development corporation through the acquisition of companies such as information unlimited software that provided spreadsheet word processor graphics and other applications . in addition to its existing ca universe database management system dbms product ca acquired independent software vendors applied data research adr in 1988 and cullinet in 1989 . both companies were struggling against ibm and its db2 product offering . in 1987 ca s stock began trading on the new york stock exchange using the ticker symbol ca following its time 1981 1987 on the nasdaq using the stock symbol casi . as the decade ended ca became the first software company after microsoft to exceed 1 billion in sales . 1990s edit early in the decade ca was forced to address criticism of the company lack of strategic focus incompatibilities among its disparate product lines a reputation for poor customer service plus failure to win a significant share in application software and database management system markets as well as a sharp decline in its stock price which fell more than 50 % during 1990 . the ensuing changes included a push into foreign markets japan canada africa latin america reform in how the company charged its customers for software maintenance and improved compatibility with products from other vendors such as hewlett packard hp apple computer and digital equipment corporation dec . in 1994 ca acquired the ask group which had acquired ingres corporation in 1990 and continued to offer the ingres database management system under a variety of brand names for example openingres ingres ii or advantage ingres . ca became the target of several competitors aggressive rip & replace sales campaigns often led by ex ca employees motivated by revenge citation needed . meanwhile ca continued its expansion through acquisitions including many of those competitors most notably in client server computing legent corporation for 1.78 billion in 1995 at that time the biggest ever acquisition in the software industry and data storage software cheyenne software for 1.2 billion in 1996 . ca again laid claim to the software industry s then largest acquisition 3.5 billion via platinum technology international in 1999 . as part of that acquisition ca obtained the autosys distributed systems vs. mainframe job scheduler which platinum had acquired in 1995 . shortly after its acquisition of platinum in order to avoid antitrust problems ca had to divest itself of certain mainframe products owning at least six batch processing schedulers . the divestiture was primarily of the z team products zeke job scheduler etc. originally from altai inc. also acquired by platinum in 1995 . ca had previously initiated a lawsuit against altai claiming copyright infringement and trade secret misappropriation computer associates int l inc. v. altai inc. after discovering in the late 1980s that ca s system adapter code was in altai s oscar software module . asg software solutions eventually took ownership of those former altai products . following ca s acquisition of uccel in 1987 many of ca s customers felt trapped considering the company s dominance in mainframe security software tape management and batch job scheduling . that sense of vendor lock in was exacerbated when mainframe databases datacom db from adr and idms from cullinet were acquired by ca in the very late 80s . many of ca s customers went running into the arms of ibm following ibm s 1996 acquisition of tivoli software . ibm s racf security software gained significant market share and db2 replaced much of ca s database clientele as did oracle mostly non mainframe . ca s 1999 acquisition of platinum technology came as a shock especially since platinum unabashedly claimed in its sales campaign against smaller isvs like israel s new dimension software and its technically superior control m job scheduler that those competitors could easily be swallowed by ca and that platinum would never be acquired by ca . the main reason for defections from ca wasn t that its software was bad but that its behavior as a vendor was . those experiences left customers with a bitter taste for isvs and has since allowed ibm to portray all isvs as potential extortionists . ca s stock price in 2012 dollars spanned a range from a low of 1.38 in september 1990 to just over 70 in december 1999 . 2000s edit entering the new millennium ca was the assemblage of some 200 acquired companies . ca faced further challenges in the early 2000s including constraints imposed by the u.s. department of justice on acquisitions the need to service and refinance large amounts of debt and a proxy battle between the board and shareholders . 9 the company also suffered from controversies regarding executive compensation accounting methods and insider trading by its then ceo and chairman sanjay kumar . ca started the india technology centre in hyderabad on december 10 2003 with an initial group of engineers recruited in the first batch of 50 employees . between 2004 and 2006 ca made sweeping changes among its board and executive team including the appointment of a new ceo john swainson plus new appointments to the positions of chairman executive vice president of strategy and business development cfo coo cto chief marketing officer chief administrative officer and co general counsel most of which were outside appointments . on september 1 2009 ca announced ceo john swainson s decision to retire by the end of the year . 10 during this