New Media on Ulitzer

The round of applause that greeted the suggestion that Ken Cron be promoted from Interim CEO to full CEO of Computer Associates International (renamed as CA as one of the first action items by John Swainson) left a smile on the face of Chairman Lewis Ranieri at the company's annual shareholder meeting in 2004.

Ken had one of the toughest jobs any CEO can imagine: that of following Sanjay Kumar and Charles Wang.

Yet under Cron's leadership CA's net income returned to the black after three consecutive years of losses and under very difficult circumstances.

Of course later the full time job went to John Swainson, IBM's WebSphere chief, who announced his retirement from his post at the end of 2009 and at the age of 52.

The Canadian press of course applauds Swainson as having been the savior of CA.

I had a breakfast meeting with Ken not too long after CA sorted out its interim CEO situation. We met at a local diner in Long Island and discussed several topics from publishing and new media to the software industry. Ken was the CEO of CMP, working with the Leeds family before and during the company's IPO and later when it was sold for close to $1bn.

I was very impressed with Cron.

IMHO, CA should have promoted Ken Cron to be full CEO back in 2004.

Ken is not a personal friend and I have not spoken to him since our breakfast meeting five years ago but now that the CA board of directors is back to the drawing board it seems, I think they should give him a call this time to offer him the job.