Computer Associates 2008 Annual Report Download - page 17

technologies. The Office of the CTO oversees the CA Council for Technical Excellence, which was formed in 2006 to
lead innovative projects designed to set the pace for true innovation in the industry and promote communication,
collaboration, standards and architectural approaches throughout CA’s global technical community. This office also
oversees two innovation centers: Research Labs to drive advanced technologies, and Emerging Business Opportunities to
manage incubator projects for innovative governance, management and security solutions beyond those developed to
support existing solutions.
Research and Development
We continue to invest extensively in product development and enhancements. We anticipate that we will continue to
adapt our software products to the rapid changes in the IT industry and will continue to enhance our products to help
them remain compatible with hardware, operating system changes and our customer’s needs.
We have approximately 5,900 engineers globally who design and support CA software and have charged to operations
over $500 million annually in fiscal 2008, 2007 and 2006 for product development and enhancements. In fiscal 2008,
2007 and 2006, we capitalized costs of $112 million, $85 million and $84 million, respectively, for internally developed
software.
Our product development staff is global, with locations in Australia, China, the Czech Republic, Germany, India, Israel,
Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States. Our technological efforts around the world ensure we maintain a
global perspective of customer needs while cost-effectively tapping the skills and talents of developers worldwide, and
enable us to efficiently and effectively deliver support to our customers.
In the United States, product development is primarily performed at our facilities in Brisbane and Redwood City,
California; San Diego, California; Lisle, Illinois; Framingham, Massachusetts; Mount Laurel, New Jersey; Islandia, New
York; Plano, Texas; and Herndon, Virginia.
We also are becoming more efficient in our product development. In October 2007, we announced the official opening
of our new CA India Technology Center facility (CA ITC) in Hyderabad. The state-of-the-art campus reflects the
substantial investment CA has made in staffing the CA ITC’s research and development operations. Our workforce in
India now exceeds 1,600. The CA ITC team will take a lead role in advancing our EITM vision of unifying and simplifying
IT management.
We also took measures to help grow our Internet threat security business through our strategic partner, HCL
Technologies (HCL) in a way that allows us to take advantage of our expertise and opportunities in this area while
enabling more aggressive product development.
To keep CA on top of major technological advances and to ensure our products continue to work well with those of
other vendors, we are active in most major standards organizations and take the lead in many. Many of our
professionals are certified across key standards, including ITIL», PMI, CSPP, and have built knowledge and expertise in
key vertical markets, such as financial services, government, telecommunications, insurance, healthcare, manufacturing
and retail. Further, CA was the first major software company to earn the International Organization for Standardization’s
(ISO) 9001:2000 Global Certification.
Patents and Trademarks
Certain aspects of our products and technology are proprietary. We rely on U.S. and foreign intellectual property laws,
including patent, copyright, trademark and trade secret laws to protect our proprietary rights. As of March 31, 2008, we
hold over 600 patents worldwide and over 1,000 patent applications are pending worldwide for our technology.
However, the extent and duration of protection given to different types of intellectual property rights vary under different
countries’ legal systems. Generally, our U.S. and foreign patents expire at various times over the next 20 years. While
the durations of our patents vary, we believe that the durations of our patents are adequate. The expiration of any of our
patents will not have a material adverse effect on our business. In some countries, full-scale intellectual property
protection for our products and technology may be unavailable, or the laws of other jurisdictions may not protect our
proprietary technology rights to the same extent as the laws of the United States. We also maintain contractual
restrictions in our agreements with customers, employees and others to protect our intellectual property rights. In
addition, we occasionally license software and technology from third parties, including some competitors, and
incorporate them into our own software products.
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