CA turmoil as iCanSP head resigns

A rough week at Computer Associates International got rougher on Tuesday when Nanci Li, wife of founder Charles Wang and CEO of the company's iCanSP managed services subsidiary, unexpectedly resigned.

The news came a day after the US Securities and Exchange Commission issued CA a "Wells notice", a procedural letter informing the company of potential legal action related to questionable accounting practices in fiscal year 2000.

Li, a 24-year CA veteran, had been quoted in published reports as saying that CA not only ignored but also competed with iCanSP. She even reportedly offered to purchase CA's 90 percent stake in the start-up, but CA refused.

Several iCanSP managers also resigned, according to an iCanSP spokesman.

CA declined to comment on the resignation.

With Li's departure, all connections between the Wang family and CA are gone. Wang retired from the company in 2002 and received a US$1.1 billion bonus in 1998 that raised the ire of CA shareholders.

Since then, as federal probes into CA's accounting practices have persisted, rumours have swirled about a high-tension rift between Wang and his one-time protege, current Chairman and CEO Sanjay Kumar.

In December 2003, iCanSP's iCan Service Management Suite was released, targeting corporate IT organisations functioning as internal managed service providers.

At the time, Li hailed the product as a major service management tool and said the company planned a channel program later this year.

On Wednesday, the spokesman declined to comment how Li's resignation might impact those channel plans, or CA's plans for the managed services business overall. He also declined to comment on iCanSP's plans to hire or name a successor, except to say that the responsibilities had been "reassigned".

Some of CA's channel partners were "concerned" that the company's nascent managed services effort appears to be in jeopardy.

Joe Young, president of Global Data Systems, said that while Li's departure didn't necessarily indicate anything in particular, it certainly didn't bode well for the future of managed services at CA.

"Initially, CA was committed to the channel for its growth of managed services, and that didn't work out the way they hoped," Young said, referring to sagging sales on the company's Unicenter product.

"Now they have a subsidiary that is a managed services provider -- it makes you wonder," Young said.