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User conferences are planned so far in advance that it is impossible for the technology company involved to know whether the timing will be lucky or not. But systems management software giant Computer Associates' flagship event, CA World, seems especially cursed.

Three years ago, the event was completely overshadowed by a shareholder revolt and attempted boardroom coup; last year, it was gripped by an accounting controversy. This time, it was dominated by a management shake-up and firings within the finance department after CA restated more than $2 billion in revenue from a previous year. At times it seemed that CA's forlorn executives spent more time firefighting and answering awkward questions than talking about technology.

CA's mission was to reassure the 10,000 delegates that the company would emerge stronger and more focused from the crisis. It also tried to lighten the mood: the decision to replace former US secretary of state Madeleine Albright with the TV comic Bill Cosby as the conference's opening keynote speaker seemed inspired, if a little surreal.

Try as they might, however, CA's executives could hardly ignore the recent troubles. "Given what CA's been going through lately, as well as the rest of the world, we thought it would be nice to lighten things up a bit," said interim CEO Kenneth Cron, as he introduced Cosby.

Cron, who has gone on record as saying he does not want to be considered for the role of permanent CEO, later pledged that during his time at the top he would be "committing CA to the highest standards of fiscal integrity" and would strive to open a "new chapter for this company". He hit the ground running, quickly creating a new position of chief compliance officer (although it remains to be seen whether this individual makes a greater impact than an earlier corporate governance director). At the same time, CA is sending a familiar message to its customers: business as usual. Yogesh Gupta, CA's chief technology officer, insists that product development has not been adversely affected. "Yes, we have had turmoil in the finance and legal departments, but at the same time we on the technology side have been focused on helping our customers. We could easily have been distracted but we haven't," he says.

That focus has manifested itself in one way: a newly streamlined approach to its notoriously diverse product set, called 'enterprise infrastructure management', or EIM. The idea of EIM, says Gupta, is to enable customers "to run IT like a business" by adding elements of financial administration and financial discipline, such as metering and chargeback.

EIM encompasses elements from all CA's sectors - including systems management, security and storage management products. Many analysts suggest it is CA's latest attempt to overcome criticism that its product set is too large and unwieldy, although some warned that customers might find it harder to buy individual components or remove certain elements. The integration of CA's disparate products is not moving fast enough for everyone, however. "I can't fault them on their strategy, I can't fault their efforts, but I can fault them on how long it's taking," says Jon Collins of UK analyst Quocirca.

But if progress remains slow, at least it seems to be in the right direction. CA will be hoping next year's user conference - for which the T-shirts are already printed, a little optimistically - will be held under more favourable circumstances.