Really excellent article for some hard data.
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If anyone wants to know why Borland's sales have been flat and why they needed VSGN look no further than here.
Oveall C++ market is flat.
Don't expect Delphi to grow.
(Context: Even MSFT VB, likely the most popular environment, only $200 million last year - could this be right???)
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JBuilder - 10% of Java market or 12 million out of 120 million in 1997 (remember JBuilder was out roughly just half as long as the others were.)
Most importantly check out the 45% CAGR
(Note if Borland did not take over VSGN and create a new product line/services, in 5 years: JBuilder would have grown to say 150 million in sales (adjusting for partial 1997 - assuming JBuilder has 20% market share), based on the comments below about Delphi and C++, optimistically assuming all others stay flat, then BORL 5 years from now would have had 150 million more in annual revenue or around 350 million - not bad but nowhere close to 500 million in 3 years if Del does as promised.
In fact under these WAG assumptions, BORL would have had revenue of 250 million or so in 3 years as opposed to the 500 million that Del is gunning for. (and yes I know there are risks involved in the 500 million # blah blah blah...)
That's a doubling of the revenue base cp. to what would have been achieved if BORL had relied entirely on internal growth (i.e., if it had been a "passive" player.) )
Article follows:
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Borland's Plan To Grow
It's not the new name, but its focus on distributed enterprise computing means
profits
By Cynthia Bournellis
San Francisco--When Borland International, Inc. announced its new corporate name--Inprise Corp.--last week, the response was less than overwhelming. Standing for integrating the enterprise, the Inprise name is the result of an 18-month plan to turn Borland around. But analysts fear that customers will have a hard time recognizing the new name.
Industry veteran Delbert Yocam joined Borland 18 months ago, after holding senior posts at Tektronix and Apple. "This company has great technology and people, or I wouldn't have joined," he said. "I have had to radically change the company. I've put a three-year plan in place, and I am clear when I set objectives and monitor performance." Borland returned to profit, posting sales of $46.5 million in the most recent quarter.
Borland has bounced on and off customer radar screens for some time. Once revered for its Quattro Pro spreadsheet products, Borland, under earlier leadership of Philippe Kahn, missed opportunities in certain markets and took unfortunate chances in others. He bet that IBM's OS/2
operating system would be a success and he tried to compete across the board with Microsoft.
Known for his flagrant style for parties at industry conventions, Borland's founder, Mr. Kahn was criticized by pundits for not keeping Borland on track. "They tended to focus on the biggest of the
big applications development projects," said Larry Perlstein, an analyst at Dataquest. This opened the door to others such as IBM and Oracle. After losses of $20 million for five consecutive quarters, Mr. Kahn resigned as CEO in 1983. Today he is chairman and CEO of Starfish
Software in Scotts Valley, Calif.
Borland eventually left the productivity applications business, focusing on development tools instead. Today, 65 percent of its revenue comes from its enterprise business. But while, it has a
large following, Borland has had to fight for the attention of chief information officers.
Operating as Inprise, Mr. Yocam believes the name will become synonymous with the next wave in enterprise computing, referred to as multi-tiered, or distributed enterprise applications. Inprise's
approach to this is a new solution called Application Server.
Enter the Application Server
Based on Borland's VisiBroker CORBA technology, Windows and Java development tools, the new solution also integrates products from Visigenic Software, a company Borland acquired in February. Visigenic focuses on distributed "object" technology, which merges object-oriented programming with client/server architecture to help IT organizations build an infrastructure that can adapt to changes in technology, while using their existing computer platforms.
Mr. Yocam said the components within Application Server will radically reduce an application's time to market and simplify the deployment and management of applications based on distributed computing. It is also a way to release Inspire from Microsoft's shadow. Microsoft has a strong position in the tools market with Visual Basic C++ and Visual J++, which compete with Inprise's Delphi and JBuilder tools. Microsoft sold $200 million worth of Visual Basic licenses in 1997, according to Dataquest.
Dataquest expects little future growth for Borland's Delphi. "Delphi is a good product and Borland's is the strongest, but people have turned their noses up to it thinking that it's not Java," said Mr. Perlstein. He said the C++ tools category has been flat, because everyone is figuring out what to do with Java.
According to Dataquest, licenses for Java Internet tools reached $120 million in 1997. Of that, JBuilder accounted for $12 million. The market is expected to grow at a 45 percent compounded
annual rate over the next 5 years. Now Inspire will sell Application Server under the new name.
The Borland brand will be used for a select group of development tools. Inprise shares will be traded over NASDAC as INPR after the company's annual shareholder meeting June 6.
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No wonder Del is pumped!
Y2001 is official - a 3 year plan
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Shane (who still feels that there is lots of good stuff ahead and acknowledges that there are quite a few risks as well...) |
