All:
Here is a message off of CServe from Zack:
There's been quite a few responses here on this thread and Lance (both Lances actually) have given some good information. I'll just also add a couple of points here that explain a little bit further why we believe its important to have a family of interoperable tools and why that's a part of our "golden gate" strategy.
We're certainly very happy with the success of Delphi so far in the market place. In its first 18 months, we've sold over 500,000 copies, making it a very widely used language with a huge third party infrastructure of books, magazines, components, training courses etc. (Tw points help put that in comparison: First its about 3 times the market share of PowerBuilder, according to IDC and secondly Scott McNealy is getting front page magazine coverage for Java now with approximately 200,000 developers. Of course, we believe Java will be important also, particularly as the internet continues to blur the lines of client/server development...)
However, as much success as we've achieved, you will still find that the majority of large mission critical client/server applications are written in (surprise): C++. The reason is that very few centralized IT developers want to bet their business on a language that's only available from a single vendor, no matter how good it is. So even though we have sold a lot of copies of Delphi to corporate developers, the majority of the success has been at the departmental level. (We have sold Delphi into centralized IT in some large organizations, but there are more cases where we have not.) Similarly, you'll find that PowerBuilder, VB and the other "RAD" tools tend to be used for applications where productivity or ease is critical and C++ is used where the power and control are most important.
We've done a lot of research into the C++ space and there are a large number of corporate, centralized IT developers who will simply not walk away from their C++ code base, but they do want tools that will make them more productive. In fact, productivity is the number one barrier they face. So, we've been working quietly on a "RAD C++" environment for quite some time. Its a tough project; in some ways much harder to do than Delphi, because you have to ensure complete compatibility with ANSI C++. A lot of folks, Microsoft included, do not believe its possible to deliver this kind of productivity to C++; in fact, it doesn't seem to be much of a priority to them. Of course, we don't like to underestimate Microsoft, since they are a good competitor, but I think you'll find that as with Delphi, we have a pretty good lead on them with our next C++ product.
So, we see "Ebony", our RAD C++ environment, as serving a very different purpose than "Ivory" our Delphi 97 product. And given that we've sold so many copies of Delphi, we expec to sell even more copies of "Ebony" since C++ remains a standard language that is widely used.
For Delphi developers, I think this will provide folks with a few extra benefits. First of all, it means that the components, tools and techniques you're used to using are now applicable to C++. If you know C++ or have C++ code already, you can leverage that immediately with Ebony. If you have clients who want you to use C++ (for whatever reason) you can do that also. If you're perfectly happy with Delphi, but you know folks who haven't used it because they've got too much of a C++ investment, you can look really smart by telling them about Ebony. In short, you have a broader range of choices and tools available to you.
We were certainly very concerned in the development of "Ebony" that we create a new complementary tool, rather than simply end up replacing Delphi. So during the development we did a lot more research with our customers to understand how they're using Delphi and how they use C++. As it turns out, many of the large IT organizations where Delphi is being used expect to continue to use it for departmental applications, high productivity projects and for their 4GL type programmers. And they expect to use "Ebony" in their current C++ projects and among the existing C++ prggrammers. In fact, several of them have said that since "Ebony" and "Ivory" are so interoperable and they can share components etc, they'll probably be more likely to use Delphi, because now there's kind of a halo around it knowing there's a C++ environment that can use those components, forms etc.
Of course, beyond "Ebony" and "Ivory" we also expect that there are many other areas of x-platform, web development where folks will want to use Open JBuilder, our Java Rad environment, as well as IntraBuilder, our RAD environment for building data-driven Web server applications with JavaScript. (If you haven't tried this, check out the trial version on our web site.) We believe that as the internet continues to grow in its influence it cuts across many different areas of application development and that there's no single tool that can do everything. So we're focused on leveraging common technology to address a wide range of problems with a family of interoperable tools.
And again, a major advantage to a Delphi developer is that the component model in Open JBuilder, known as Java Beans, is derived from the Delphi component model. So again, you have a leg up on others if you want to leverage your skills and apply them to cross-platform, web-delivered applications.
I've been at Borland for about 6 1/2 years now, and I've never seen such a strong line up of products coming down the pike. Delphi is always going to have a special place in the industry and at Borland with its emphasis on pure productivity without limits. And now we're effectively going to leverage that technology into other areas with a whole family of interoperable tools. If you want to get a bit more information about our "golden gate" strategy, check out the whitepaper on our website. It won't provide more details on "Ebony" and "Ivory" at this point, but you may find it interesting to see how all this fits into our broader strategy of bridging the internet and client/server architectures.
Over the next few months, we'll be delivering more information about "Ebony" about "Ivory" etc. We decided to start a "teaser" to get people excited about things with the bitmap on our website, but if it caused some confusion or concern on your part, I apologize. (At least, it provided this opportunity for me to provide some more details!) If you're at Comdex we'll be showing a bit more of all our products.
On a final note, there's a whole slew of Delphi programmers here working this weekend to build the next release of Delphi97. We hope we can make everyone on this forum as excited as we are about the new products. |
