CA appoints former Taleo boss as new chief executive

CA Technologies has appointed former Taleo boss Michael Gregoire as its new chief executive, succeeding William McCracken, who is set to retire.

Gregoire spent seven years at cloud-based talent management firm Taleo, which was acquired by Oracle in early 2012 for $2 billion.

CA began looking for a replacement for the 70-year-old McCracken in July, and was expected to make an announcement within weeks.

Under McCracken's tenure, CA embarked on an effort to transform its legacy mainframe software business into a platform for managing cloud computing deployments – a strategy that looks likely to continue given Gregoire's history at cloud firm Taleo. 

“It is clear that CA Technologies is well-positioned to lead the industry as companies find it more critical than ever to manage and secure their IT environments in the cloud and efficiently provide business services that enable them to win in the marketplace,” Gregoire said.

Prior to his role at Taleo, Gregoire had worked for PeopleSoft, which was also acquired by Oracle, and spent 15 years at IT services giant EDS.

Gregoire will take the reins on 7 January 2013, and will get a helping hand settling in from McCracken, until the latter retires in March.

McCracken, a former IBM executive, took over at CA in 2010, replacing another former Big Blue staffer, John Swainson, the person widely credited for steadying the ship at CA, after it had been rocked by accounting scandals.