Picked up a pointer from the Yahoo thread to an Inprise newsgroup
discussion on what borland.com is and isn't. For all the gory
details, among numerous postings stick this URL in your browser:
news://forums.inprise.com/borland.public.delphi.non-technical
and look for the thread titled:
"Inprise to cut 190 jobs - Who is going to turn the lights off"
For those who don't want to dig through all the discussion, I've
excerpted three postings from Charlie Calvert who is apparently some
sort of customer relations type person, but is also the author of the
most useful 3rd party book on programming Delphi.
>conference call replay:
>U.S. phone #1-800-475-6701
>Over Seas #1-320-365-3844
>conference code#430811
Subject: Re: Inprise to cut 190 jobs - Who is going to turn the lights off
Date: Thu, 28 Jan 1999 08:19:26 -0800
From: "Charlie Calvert " <ccalvertnoguff@inprise.com>
Newsgroups: borland.public.delphi.non-technical
All this happened yesterday, and so we have not had time to settle all the
details. But let me try to reiterate what Josh has said and to clarify a few
points as best I understand them. A few things I say here may be a bit
preliminary, but I hope I have the major facts right.
Del has said explicitly that the goal of this process is to satisfy the
thousands of personal demands he has received from developers to place
sufficient emphasis on independent developers and our developer products.
The concern was that Delphi, CBuilder and JBuilder were getting short shrift
because of Inprise's emphasis on corporate (aka enterprise), technologies.
According to Del, the major reason for creating borland.com was to satisfy
the demands of developers.
Things have not had time to shake out yet, and so I cannot be sure how
things will look when the dust settles. However, at this point, I am
inclined to greet this change with enthusiasm. As some readers of this
thread know, I'm a Delphi and C++Builder author, and my allegiance and
enthusiasm has always been reserved primarily for our developer products. In
short, I love Delphi, and I want to promote anything that promotes Delphi.
To my mind, the establishment of borland.com allows Delphi, C++Builder,
JBuilder and InterBase developers to have their own private world back. This
world is dedicated solely to making Delphi, CBuilder, JBuilder and InterBase
a success. Everybody in this part of the company -- Tech Support, R&D, Dev
Rel ,Docs, etc -- will be interested in developer solutions. The Delphi and
CBuilder development teams work for borland.com. There will be R&D in both
Inprise and borland.com.
This does not mean that JBuilder for Appserver, AppCenter, Enterprise Java
Beans, and other related technologies are not important, it just means that
they are going to be handled by Inprise, while borland.com will handle
Delphi, CBuilder, and JBuilder.
borland.com is already an existing, if still fledgling, site. But
from now on, that's our home page. We go there for information on Delphi,
CBuilder, JBuilder and InterBase. The enterprise people can go their way,
and have their own world to play in. Its focus is www.inprise.com.
To me, this is great news. Its exactly what I wanted to hear. For my part, I
will enthusiastically support this move, though I will continue to watch
carefully to see that things develop along the lines most favorable to
Delphi, CBuilder, JBuilder and InterBase developers.
- Charlie Calvert
borland.com Developer Relations
Subject: Re: Inprise to cut 190 jobs - Who is going to turn the lights off
Date: Thu, 28 Jan 1999 12:11:20 -0800
From: "Charlie Calvert " <ccalvertnoguff@inprise.com>
Newsgroups: borland.public.delphi.non-technical
When Del addressed the company about the change, he said specifically that
borland.com is being created so that there will be a branch of the company
dedicated to making and marketing developer products. As it was explained to
me, the primary goal of the company is the feed and caring of the Delphi,
CBuilder, JBuilder and InterBase product lines. These lines will now be
handled completely separately from the AppServer/AppServer/VisiBroker
product lines.
For developers, this is great news! Delphi, CBuilder and JBuilder are great
products, but their audience is not at all the same audience that wants to
buy AppCenter, and it is only rarely the same audience that wants to buy
VisiBroker. So the company has done the right thing. They have given
borland.com free reign to go after the developer market.
Its early days yet, but from all that I have heard, borland.com R&D will now
have nothing to do with Inprise R&D. The Delphi/CBuilder R&D team will work
full time on Delphi and CBuilder, with their aim being to please the
developer market.
- Charlie Calvert
Borland Developer Relations
Subject: Re: Inprise to cut 190 jobs - Who is going to turn the lights off
Date: Thu, 28 Jan 1999 17:54:23 -0800
From: "Charlie Calvert " <ccalvertnoguff@inprise.com>
Newsgroups: borland.public.delphi.non-technical
>Inprise buys Visigenic, change name to Inprise, make everyone confused, and
>six months later start the process all over again.
You make a number of good points here, but I would like to add a few
comments. I'm not particularly pleased with the path we took from point A to
point B, from where we were at this time last year to where we are now, but
I am glad that we finally got here.
A year ago, Borland had one foot in the enterprise realm and one foot in the
developer realm, and everyone was tugged in two directions. Now, borland.com
is about independant developers, and Inprise is about enterprise
development. That seems to me to be a clean, well thought out solution to
the company's delimma.
Its not really my area, but I accept the argument that creating Inprise was
a good idea. I have been told that we were having trouble selling enterprise
products because the people who made enterprise purchases didn't want to
hear the name Borland. So we changed the name. Good idea? Bad idea? I don't
know. Not my field. But it seemed like a reasonable course of action to me.
The problem, of course, was what could we do for developers after we changed
the name? At first it seemed reasonable to assume that some solutions would
emerge, particularly if there was a big influx of enterprise money, but for
one reason or another, those solutions did not appear. Maybe other factors
also came into Del's mind as he thought what to do next. At any rate, he
decided to break off the developer part of the company into something called
borland.com.
The end result is something that makes sense to me. The enterprise people
get exactly what they want from Inprise, and the developers can start to
find their own solutions at borland.com.
How will this develop over the next view months? Well, I can't say for sure.
I don't have a crystal ball, and I can't tell you that now the developers
will get everything they want. But I can tell you that I like having a
company, borland.com, that is focused on development. I also like the web
ecommerce angle. But that's secondary to me, what I care about is that
borland.com's job is not to promote enterprise development but to promote
Delphi!
So okay, the road over here has been -- well, let's just say -- a bit
rough, but I am glad that we got to this place.
- Charlie Calvert
Borland Developer Relations |
