Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Technology Stocks : BORL: Time to BUY! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jimily who wrote (7012)	10/30/1997 1:05:00 AM
From: David Miller	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10836

>>Do you expect Borl to experience the same problems Cntr is experiencing now??<< Jimily, I am sure that you meant this as one of those <TIC> posts, but it is actually a very serious question. Centura once had a niche in the ADE market - somewhat "upmarket", I may add, of where Borland was at the time, i.e. they were addressing client/server development at the enterprise level while Borland still thought Turbo Pascal was pretty neat stuff. As I'm sure it was. They lost this position for a number of reasons. It would be be a good idea to have a close look at these reasons, and work out whether or not Borland is immune from them. These are all my opinion, of course, and feel free to disagree; I think the exercise will be worthwhile in any event. 1. Market positioning: Centura lost its marketing focus, and found that it couldn't simply explain "why Centura" to its customers any more. I think that Borland has a golden opportunity to fall into this trap, if it fails to bridge the gap between its current image as a desktop tools company and that of being a positive force for productivity within an enterprise. They are very different markets and require very different skills. 2. Go-to-market strategy and execution: Centura went through a phase of schizophrenia with its distribution strategy. Instead of encouraging the proliferation of dozens of "partners" - ISVs, SIs etc - as Powersoft was doing at the time, they flipped between direct and indirect models, at a crucial stage of the market-share battle in their segment. Instead of investing in their channel, they reduced its ability to profit from their products, and put all their marketing money into a product "seeding" campaign. Borland - with its current mixed signals on distribution strategy - is strongly positioned to similarly misread the market's needs. Does the "new Borland" need a channel? If so, what do they contribute, and how do they benefit? If not, how do we transition the company into a more direct model without losing revenue momentum? 3. Fashion: quite simply, the market in which Centura operated (2-tier C/S) went out of fashion. With the "next wave" of toolsets about to break over us (check out companies like BEA as well as Oracle and CA for evidence of this), you have to ask the question whether Borland are i) perfectly ii) well iii) not very or iv) poorly positioned to take advantage of it. Paul Gross understood it, but he has gone over to the dark side. 4. Revenue sources: Centura were actually pretty good at tailoring licensing to customer needs, and clearly understood the need for different forms of continuing revenue streams - "subscription" support, carefully managed deployment licenses etc. Borland still seems to have a shift-the-box mentality; call the support line, for example, and ask them their policy on deploying MIDAS runtimes from a Delphi 3 license. Post their answer here. Sorry for being long-winded, but you brought up the question, and I thought it was a fair one. david