Borland: Interest, but no buyer for tools line

Marketing VP discusses Borland's future in the ALM market

By Paul Krill, InfoWorld, 03/06/06

Print
Email
Feedback
Resources
Discuss

Digg
Reddit
SlashDot
Stumble
del.icio.us
Technorati
dzone

Page 3 of 4

IW: I guess a lot of people probably would not have been surprised that you're getting out of the Java IDE business, but I think perhaps there is some surprise about selling off Delphi. Is there anything more you can say about why that shouldn't be a surprise, or do you understand why it might be a surprise?

Frieberg: I think people thought it was evident in the media that we were having declining revenues in the Java IDE business, but Delphi was actually helping in increasing revenue business for us. It's not that the Java IDE or the Delphi IDE is bad business, it's [that] our focus is on ALM. I heard a great analogy: Armies tend to fight a lot better when you burn the bridges behind them. And so, by getting focused on the ALM lifecycle, it gives Borland just [a] clear focus on what we need to be successful at.

IW: Tod Nielsen is the new chief at Borland. Was it his decision to sell these off, or were there a lot of people involved? How did this come about?

Frieberg: I think this is a decision that we've been looking at for an extended period of time, and Tod was the CEO on duty when we actually made the decision. So, Tod was a big part of that decision and basically sanctioned the decision to go forward.

IW: But this had been thought of before he came to Borland?

Frieberg: Oh yes, it was in progress long before Tod got on board.

IW: Borland, with its ALM strategy, SDO, is competing against Rational, which is established in that field, and Microsoft, which is not established, but, of course, is Microsoft. How do you compete with companies like that?

Frieberg: Actually, why our customers select us is really around choice and heterogeneity. Microsoft and IBM both have compelling offerings in the ALM space. But, Microsoft Visual Studio Team System is clearly for .Net development—and only .Net development. And, it's a great solution for that. And, [at IBM Rational] people like Danny Sabbah [who is in charge of Rational's vision] have said in public [that] the Rational tools are for facilitating WebSphere development. So, if you're a .Net developer, Visual Studio Team System is a great choice. If you're a WebSphere deployment shop, Rational is an alternative. And those two market segments—that's where those two companies play. Borland is the choice of companies who have heterogeneity, have other infrastructure besides just Java WebSphere. So, if you're BEA or open source or have a mix of these environment[s], we basically provide the credible alternative to those proprietary vendors, who are basically pushing their runtime stack, not their tooling.

IW: What has been the reception to your SDO strategy, and what percentage of your revenues is coming from that?

Frieberg: Our SDO strategy maps to our ALM tool products, and I don't know the specific revenue percentage.

IW: Is there anything else that you wanted to touch on, such as future offerings from Borland?

Frieberg: Yes, I guess there's two points I would make. One is that the reception [to] our message and our vision for SDO has been tremendous, and that's one of the contributing factors [to us focusing on ALM] to moving away from the IDE business. Because the reception was so good, it gave us the ability to say [that] we can build this as a standalone business with tremendous growth, and we want to put more resources towards ALM, and we got those resources by shifting away from the IDE focus.

For more enterprise computing news, visit InfoWorld. Story copyright InfoWorld Media Group, Inc.