Good set of questions, Graham.
Do you feel that the "enterprise information infrastructure" direction that Borland/Inprise has shifted towards is the right one (or at least a good one) considering their position of, say, 2 years ago?
Definitely. In fact two years ago, they were already headed in this direction - the bid for Open Environment was in Spring 1997, that's two and a half years ago. But yes, they had to move away from reliance on desktop revenues and margins: Microsoft taught them that.
If so, how long would you expect such a redirection to take, and what sort of timetable would you have had for a vendor to establish a good position in that market?
One year to transition the organization, two years (maximum) to have established the "foundation market share" from which growth can be leveraged. Anything longer, (particularly with organization transition) and there will always be problems with execution, the market simply moves too fast. What seems to be a rock-solid, killer strategy one day, can quickly become "just another spanner". Look at Forte for a good example of this.
Is any other company attaining the performance in that market that you would like to see
Not so far, which is in itself very interesting. The role of the small company is to be a technological leader, unfortunately there seem only to be a bunch of technological "me-toos" in this segment. Pure technology companies such as Visigenic, Kiva, WebLogic and NetDynamics are the ones who set the pace, and get absorbed very quickly.
Ultimately, it probably means that this market will soon become populated with the major players such as Microsoft, Oracle, CA, IBM, who have either built or acquired the necessary technologies and can market them as part of an overall strategy for an enterprise.
david |
