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Borland Divests IDEs to Focus on ALM
ShinyBrowncoat writes "Borland recently announced they are putting their IDE business up for sale (JBuilder, Delphi, etc.)." This move comes at the same time Borland announced they would be aggressively pushing forward with their Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) business by purchasing Segue Software Inc.
Borland, long the maker of some kickass development tools now is interested in aggressively pursuing a company whose opening paragraph on it's web site home page begins:
Sigh. I guess not they're pursuing the kickass world of business-speak (including but not limited to the term: Application Lifecycle Management (ALM)).
For the record, I'm not opposed to quality tools, but, first and foremost, application lifecycle management (ooops, sorry, ALM) is less a result of some tool "delivering quality optimization solutions that ensure..." and more a result of teams of people; clients, designers, coders, etc., that know how and what to do.
So long Borland, it's been nice knowing you.
Interesting shift in focus.
Wow, Borland is still in business? I remember that I never got Turbo C to compile the examples that were in the book that came with it. I blame them for me not being such a great programmer.
Zhrodague.net - I do projects and stuff too.
I still have Delphi 7 on my box--it's a tremendous tool for developing Windows apps.
However, I am also very very glad I switched to development with open-source languages a few years ago, and I'm switching more and more to open-sourced development tools to go along with the open-source languages I utilize.
To hitch software development to any company is becoming increasingly precarious, not only because these companies can go out of business (or out of control like Microsoft), it's because proprietary tools makers have this strange propensity to overbuild their products to the point of buzzword-itis and uselessness (Delphi beyond version 7 is clearly that, and MS long ago strayed away from what developers need).
This stupid action by Borland, a once-great company, provides us in the open-source community yet another example to tell the story that open-source is not "free as in beer", but "free as in freedom".
And I will also take this opportunity to make a request to Borland regarding Delphi: Instead of selling it, OPEN SOURCE IT!!!!!
Steve Magruder, Metro Foodist
I worked at Borland during the time in question, and what you describe is not what I saw first hand. But maybe you know Anders personally, and have better info. It just clashes with what I saw.
For example, Anders did not quit and call Microsoft. Microsoft recruited him while he was still employed at Borland. In fact, they sent a limo to pick him up right at the Borland entrance. And how badly did he want to leave Borland? So not badly that when Microsoft offered him a cool million, he asked Borland to match (not beat) the offer, so he could stay.
It was only when Borland execs rejected the idea of any developer being worth a million that he bailed.
Also, while I can't say what Anders thought of Delphi, I can say that the "Delphi for Java" text you put in quotes sounds an awful lot like how he described what he was going to do at his new job, not what he asked of Borland.
As an aside, one bit of data that was clear almost immediately was that everyone -- except for 2 or 3 execs -- thought that losing Anders was awful. It wasn't one of those decisions where, looking back months or years later, you realized it was wrong. It was instantaneous. The decision was made, and every VP and Director I knew said, "Terrible move! Over a lousy million!"
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