Computer Associates - Another Corporate Thief 05/15/03

In 1995, ARCserve backup software was owned by Cheyenne Software and it was a good product supported by a good company. Enter goliath Computer Associates in 1996. They acquired Cheyenne and the ARCserve line. From that time forward, the software slowly started deteriorating in quality. Throughout, CA has continued to shortchange ARCserve customers by cutting costs on product documentation and testing. The result being sloppy, error filed documentation and products, in addition to a level of support that is laughable (to those that didn't have an investment in the product).
Recently, we installed an ARCserve 2000 Exchange backup agent for brick level backups. The horrific amount of hours spent would have been totally unnecessary had CA's documentation not been chuck full of errors. Similar scenarios have played out with other CA products over the past few years, to the point more money gets spent slogging through their documentation errors than on the investment value in the products themself. We finally threw the towel in on CA and took the hit. We tried Dantz's Retrospect Multiserver (a smaller competitor of CA's) and found their products to be a breath of fresh air in comparison. The only fear now is that CA will someday buy up Dantz (when they become enough of a threat) and then rape the customer base, like they did with Cheyenne.
CA's new name for the ARCserve line is now Brightstor. Sanjay Kumar (the CEO) still flys in CA jets and the company is under investigation by the SEC. All on the dime of customers who purchased their products and then got systematically shortchanged.
A parting quote found on the web: "Installing Arcserve is not enough punishment, you must make it work. And backup alone is not good enough either, you must restore too. And when you are done, please call CA and let them know how you did it."

Computer Associates - http://ca.com