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Microsoft to Buy Rational and/or Borland?
oblivious writes "I got this in e-mail this evening: According to a Reuters report that crossed the wires late today, the speculation is that Microsoft will make bids to buy both Rational and Borland. Shares of both Rational and Borland are up on the news, and so far both IBM and Microsoft have no comment on this report." We recently ran a story about IBMs planned purchase of Rational. Chris didn't make clear in here - it's not that Microsoft might buy both, but that Borland might be a likely target, if a bid to buy Rational out from under IBM fails, which it is likely too. Rational and IBM have signed the substantive portion of the agreement already, so any sort of counter bid would have some fun legal consequences for all involved.
If this is true, they've obviously decided to really flip the bird to the courts...
If there were any rumor about MS thinking about bidding for both Rational and Borland as part of the same universe (and bear in mind that even the separate rumors are just rumors), it would surely have been in the first paragraph of Reuters' story, instead of what is (Rational), which is the more important rumor of the two.
To our valued customers:
.NET, and others.
We are delighted to tell you that IBM and Rational Software have announced a definitive agreement for IBM to purchase Rational. This is a very exciting time for both companies and builds on the extensive business relationship IBM and Rational have had for over 20 years. Most importantly, it will provide significant benefits to you.
If you've been using Rational's solution to build business applications to automate your business, you will appreciate the combination of Rational's solution with IBM's e-business strategy. IBM helps customers integrate their business processes and software infrastructures to build an on-demand e-business. This requires the integration of software development, transaction management, data management, collaboration, and systems management and security. With Rational's demonstrated strength in software development, IBM will offer leading solutions in each of these categories and provide a complete solution for creating an on-demand e-business. This includes broad support for your application development efforts for a variety of environments, including J2EE,
If you've been using Rational's solution to build software for software products and systems, you'll enjoy the benefits of an improved solution through the combination of IBM and Rational technology. Rational's outstanding solution in this space will be amplified through synergies with IBM's pervasive computing strategy. This is an important market for IBM, and Rational is key to IBM's software strategy. Whether you're building a software product, a technical system, real-time software, or embedded software, IBM will be able to provide you with industry-leading products, services and support.
Rational will become the fifth division in IBM Software Group (joining WebSphere, DB2, Lotus, and Tivoli) and retain its brand identity. The division will be led by Mike Devlin, Rational's current CEO.
As with other business acquisitions of this nature, this one will require government regulatory approval and the approval of Rational's shareholders.
IBM and Rational are impressive as separate entities. Together, with our complementary software strategies, people talents, and commitment to customer success, we can provide you with even more value.
Thank you for your continued support. We look forward to expanding our relationship with you in the future.
Best regards,
Steve Mills
Senior Vice President & Group Executive
IBM Software Group
Michael Devlin
CEO
Rational Software
Well Borland is profitable:
roughly 5m/quarter for the past 4...
That's 8% net profit margin - now this isn't
Microsoft level profits but it's probably
ethically obtained!
When you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras
Actually, this story is more accurate.
First this is jusr rumors and speculations.
Second, Borland will likely become an acquisition target for MS ONLY in the event that IBM complete the acquisition of Rational.
If MS do acquire Borland, that will be funny (and painful at the same time). They would acquire a bunch of very popular Java products! And the UML tool (which is the thing they are the most interested in) is written in Java! What will they do with it... convert it to C#?
Microsoft in buying Borland aquires not only a UML modelling tool (Borland recently aquired TogetherSoft). But, they also purchase one of the better Java vendors out there. This move is both offensive and defensive. M$ gains a UML modelling environment while simultaneously killing off a significant segment of the Java tools industry.
If Microsoft pursues Rational as well they end up with the 2 best UML tools in the industry and kill off IBM's strategic partner. The net effect is that Microsoft wins big.
However, I can't believe that M$' shareholders would agree that both purchases are necessary. I expect that if Microsoft is unable to sway Rational over then we will see them make a serious bid for Borland. After all its the UML modelling software that MS wants, and if the IBM purchase of Rational goes through then MS has no modeller for their developers.
Seeing as IBM is a large player in open source software (Apache/Eclipse/Linux) and Java I personally hope to see the Rational purchase succeed, however, M$ has a crap load of cash sitting on hand - if M$ wants to start a bidding war they certainly have the ability to.
And so the consolidation in the industry continues.
I sure hope there's some sort of public comment allowed to the FTC on such a move, because this could, as you point out, clearly be viewed as quashing competition. As JBuilder is a excellent Java development tool, and we all know by now about how Microsoft wants to kill or cripple Java. Further, JBuilder is expanded and repackaged by Oracle, a chief DB rival of Microsoft. I'm sure if I spent the afternoon I could come up with many other reasons this is anti-competitive and in dire need of a letter stating so.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Plus, Borland just bought StarBase, which produces the StarTeam SCM system, as seen in this press release. (Wow, just look at the way the Borland logo is plastered all over the StarBase website!)
So with Rational and Borland, they knock out 2 competitors in the SCM market!
Now we see the basis for Bobby Schmidt's "Hell Freezes Over" column in the latest CUJ. The next Visual C++ is standards-compliant by vacuuming up a quality comptetitor...
No, that's a troll.
But Borland has a lot of Java product, and owning that would help to maneuver it out of the C# path...
No, that's a troll, too...
Borland's CLX library has the potential to do what QT could not, popularize GUI-applications that run under 'Doze and X, so you could blunt that attempt to compete if you owned the product... (seriously, I can't name a single application on the local CompUSA shelf using QT, please educate me)
No, that's YAT (Yet Another Troll)
The fact that the DOJ is a singleton-class, MS server application running inside the Beltway box means that MS can do whatever the fsck it likes and laugh about it...
Ah, now that is a sufficiently gratuitous troll...
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Let them be bought out; let them discontinue all the competing products ... at this point, all it will do is drive people to learn more about open-source alternatives, anyway. And maybe Philippe will want to rejoin the fray. This could only be a good thing.
Mind you, there may be anti-trust concerns w. M$ buying out Borland, since Borland is their biggest competitor in the computer languages market (Borland at one time had 2/3 of ALL the language market for the PC, with everyone else splitting the difference).
Anyway, I stopped using Borland products after Delphi 3 (the newer ones didn't offer that much more, and splitting the line-up into so many different versions of the same product - Professional, Enterprise, Desktop, etc., just pissed me off). This was a far cry from the original Borland marketing philosophy: Great product, great price. I really miss the days of Turbo C / Borland C++
The next Visual C++ is standards-compliant by vacuuming up a quality comptetitor...
For Microsoft, this is standards-compliant.
I pledge allegiance to the flag...
of the Corporate States of America...
Microsoft is trying to replace Java with C#, its own, "improved" version. They are not going to buy Borland for several billion dollars just to prop up a "legacy" language like Java. If they wanted to do that, why not just release new versions of the old Visual J++? This would cost them a few millions and to hell with Borland.
No, Microsoft is doing this for one simple reason: to get rid of a Java powerhouse. Just as they did with Foxpro, which they bought and pretended to maintain for a few years while pushing their own products Access and Sql Server, they're going to shelve Borland and Togethersoft too. Why shouldn't they? They've got about $50 billion in cash, nothing to spend it on, and Java continues to annoy them. It's a logical move.
it's = "it is"; its = possessive. E.g., it's flapping its wings.
Microsoft's old strategy of killing competitors by buying them doesn't work with open source. Sorry, Bill.
The real loss will not be C++Builder. The true loss will be Kylix.
While C++Builder is a reasonable approach to C++ development, you need to consider the quality of what it generates. In my experience, the executables that C++Builder generates are very large and very slow to execute. Being a fan of Delphi, I expected fairly small and fast executables when I purchased C++Builder, but there is a definite difference between the runtimes and the resulting executable code.
If you compare the floating point code generated between Delphi and C++Builder, there is an immense difference. The Pascal code generates much faster executables -- and that ought not to be! However, this is the case for Borland's C++ product line and it has been this way for over 10 years.
Practically every other C++ compiler out there generates tighter code than Borland's, especially in the area of floating point math. I am no fan of M$, and never have been, but I must say that their binary code is tighter, by quite a margin, than Borland's. If they acquire Borland and kill off C++Builder, they will be killing off a great GUI front end with a miserable code generator. Yes, I know Borland's is more ANSI compliant...so what? If the binary is slow, and you care about run times, ANSI compatibility is not your primary concern.
Where we will lose as developers will be in the loss of Kylix. It might not be perfect, and it might not be the most efficient code creation engine, but if it creates projects that can be ported to Linux, M$ will want to kill that off quick! And I can't say that I blame them (even if I disagree with the idea).
Be excellent to each other. And... PARTY ON, DUDES!
"your mother wears army boots!"
On that note, can anybody explain why this is actually an insult? I never understood. Surely there are many mothers in the military. And army boots are rather sturdy. If my mother wore army boots I think that would imply she could kick your mother's ass. Actually, I think arming more mothers would be a good idea all-around.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?