Today, Wednesday February 8, 2006 at 1am Pacific Time, Borland announced plans to seek a buyer for our IDE product lines that include Delphi, C++Builder, C#Builder, JBuilder (and Peloton), InterBase, JDataStore, nDataStore, Kylix, and our older Borland and Turbo language products and tools. The goal is to create a standalone business focused on advancing individual developer productivity using the people inside Borland who are focused on the success of these award winning products.
It is not a trivial decision to separate our IDE business from our ALM business. As we look back over the past two years and how we have operated as a company, we have continually had to weigh every dollar investment in our ALM and developer products. All too often we have chosen to invest in ALM, because of our stated direction around ALM growth and market opportunity. But we all know that our loyal customer base demands more. There is tremendous potential that has been untapped due to the company’s focus towards an enterprise go-to-market model, with an emphasis on a more consultative, lifecycle sale forcing us to invest more into our ALM products, ALM marketing, and our enterprise field model. This is a very different model from our mostly channel-focused, direct-to-developer marketing, and delivery model (using shrink wrapped boxes and e-shop downloads).
Focus is a key success factor in business. With this announcement, both companies will have the focus they need to thrive and help our customers be successful. I think it’s great that Borland is letting us be part of a new focused company that brings together the team that is passionate about developers and development. We want to continue to create the best solutions and technology for the benefit of you, our community of developers. We are developers working on developer products for our customers who are developers. This is a special relationship that is unique in software. We get to work on products that we use ourselves and that our developer community love.
I started using Turbo Pascal v1.0 in November of 1983 when Philippe Kahn gave me a copy at Comdex Las Vegas. I put it in my IBM PC and knew immediately that this was something different. From that day, I knew I wanted to go to work for Borland. I started working at Borland on June 17, 1985 and for the past 20+ years I have had the pleasure of being a part of a great company and a great community of software developers. I’ve had the luxury and pleasure to manage the compiler group in R&D in the early Turbo Language days. For the past 15 years I’ve run Developer Relations allowing me (and our team) to travel around the world to visit with tens of thousands of programmers. I get to come to work every day and collaborate with the best developer focused software engineers on the planet.
I’m really excited to be moving to the new company. We’ve got the right team members, we’ve got the tool and component partner eco-system, we have the authors, trainers, consultants, and we have the most important part – a loyal community. Our new company will be focused completely on you and your success. Yes, both companies will have a focus on software development. Both are going to advance the state-of-the-art and best practices. They’ll just do it in different ways. Ours will do it by focusing on developer productivity and building great application development products using our award winning IDEs, tools, component libraries, class libraries, and database technologies. Borland will do it by addressing the needs of larger organizations, helping them optimize their software delivery.
I was asked today by Daryl Taft of eWeek magazine, “As Borland’s longest term employee, how does the spin-off hit you?” I answered by saying, I am moving forward as part of the new company with a huge smile on my face and a small tear in my eye.
I want to assure all of you that we are here in Scotts Valley, and around the world, working on future versions of Delphi, JBuilder and our other products. We are still listening to your needs, issues, and suggestions. We are tracking with the new platform initiatives for Windows, .NET, Java, open standards, and emerging technologies that you want to leverage.
This is the right thing to do for our IDE business. It’s the right thing to do for Borland’s ALM focus. Our priority is to ensure a smooth and successful migration for our developer customer base, and create a vehicle for giving it greater investment, focus and growth. This is not the shutting down of a product line, but the empowering of it. This move is in the best interests of our customers, company, and community.
The buyer of our IDE product lines has not yet been identified, but I and other members of our developer team are working with Borland’s executive management to ensure that we identify the right buyer who will advance the IDE business. Borland is committed to its customers first and foremost, and taking care of their ongoing needs. We will keep you informed along the journey.
