Please don’t get mad at me, but you won’t find a roadmap with dates anywhere in this blog post. If you came here it may be because you were searching the community looking for just that: The latest UIM Roadmap including dates. Well, the truth is, you won’t be able to find that here, or anywhere publicly for that matter. I am sorry about that, but if that is what you are looking, I suggest you keep reading.
Please understand. It’s not that a UIM roadmap doesn’t exist. It most certainly exists. In fact, I’m looking at one version of it right now. Product managers are all about the roadmaps. We study them, change them, add and subtract from them as a regular part of our job. Roadmaps in CA drive the priorities of engineering.
Roadmaps are not only necessary inside CA Technologies; they can be an excellent sales tool. Future customers often want proof that CA is committed to a particular product, and we have a long-term vision for making it even more valuable. As for current users, there is great value in knowing what features are coming and when you will be able to get them. After all, many product users have roadmaps too.
However, the product managers are not permitted to share roadmaps outside the company, except in controlled situations. I don’t think there is a short version to the story as to why this is the case without sounding like I am blaming other people, so I will do the best I can to keep this long description on point.
Much of how publicly-traded companies behave is driven by the United States Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, or US GAAP for short which is audited by the companies external auditors and submitted into the SEC (securities and exchange commission) There are numerous examples in the history of the stock market where a company failed to follow US GAAP and and that mistake led to financial statement restatements.
One small but significant part of US GAAP has to do with revenue recognition; in this case revenue recognition from the sale of a software license. When software is licensed to a user, the revenue must be reported to shareholders. One very important factor in reporting revenue is the quarter in which the revenue was earned, or “recognized.” (If you want some in-depth reading, you can go to the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB), and read more about Software Revenue Recognition)
According to US GAAP, software license revenue can be recognized when all the terms of a licensing contract have been delivered. If a customer makes a buying decision based on a future release of a feature not currently in the product, then the vendor cannot recognize that revenue until that feature is delivered.
Therefore it is important that CA Technologies control the distribution of dates of when specific features will be released.
CA Technologies is not alone in its policies of controlling the distribution of roadmaps. Other publicly-traded companies are required to do the same. At CA Technologies, we have External versions of the roadmap we can share to customers individually but they also do not include dates. No roadmap is published on an open website, like in a community thread or blog post. After all, roadmaps are no-business of our competitors either.
In conclusion, if you need to know what we are up to on the product, you need to reach out to a product manager directly, and they will schedule a meeting with you where such matters can be discussed individually. Arrangements can be made to share a roadmap if there is no risk of impacting revenue recognition.