CA chief executive John Swainson used his opening keynote at this year's CA World 08 user event in Las Vegas to outline how he believes the software management vendor can help firms succeed in today's tough economic climate.

Rather than wowing delegates with details of new and forthcoming products, Swainson focused mainly on listing the many technologies in CA's existing portfolio that he said can help customers meet today's IT challenges.

These include Advanced Systems Management, launched in June, and Data Center Automation Manager, announced in October, both aimed at managing virtual environments.

Although the keynote was firmly focused around the benefits of current products, Swainson did announce CA's entry into the software-as-a-service (SaaS) market.

"We can provision [CA's project management tool] Clarity On Demand in a day, " he said. "We're committed to being a leader in on-demand business management, which is why we have formed a [SaaS] business unit."

Swainson also cited virtualisation as a space for further growth. "Even now firms are not adopting virtualisation on servers with mission-critical applications," he said. "They're concerned about asset licensing and managing risk, and about the lack of control over the assets that make up virtual machines. Software licensing is difficult in a virtual environment, and there's the very real concern of security risk."

He also touched on a Mainframe 2.0 initiative that will be launched at the event, although further details were not given during the keynote.

Swainson also listed six "disruptive technologies" that he said are going to change the way businesses use IT: virtualisation; faster networks; service-oriented architecture; social networking inside the business; cloud computing; and the explosion of IP networked devices.

"These six technologies I believe will change the nature of enterprise IT forever," he said.

Swainson also outlined the four main challenges CIOs currently face: to work harder to integrate IT with the business; to figure out how to run a leaner operation and reduce costs; to manage enterprise risk; and to become customer-centric.

"The complexity challenge is an ongoing battle, a fundamental issue facing the IT industry and holding customers back," he said.

Swainson concluded by saying that, although not every company is going to survive the tough economic climate, he expected CA to emerge "stronger than ever before".

However, the outlook for CA's services division appeared less rosy, as Swainson hinted at changes to come in that area of the business. "Our services people do a great job but we believe that integration should be done through technology, not through labour," he said.