LOGIN | REGISTER NOW | SUBSCRIBE
 
 
News on Monday
more>>
SharePoint Tech Report
more>>


   

 
 
Download Current Issue
ISSUE 7/1/2009 PDF

Need Back Issues?
DOWNLOAD HERE

Receive the print Edition?


 
Is the mystery Borland suitor Serena?
Borland software is considering an offer from another company after a preliminary deal with MicroFocus. Is Serena the new company?
06/30/2009 01:55 PM EST

Windows 7 - An eBayer's dream product?
Windows 7 pre-orders can make people money on eBay.
06/29/2009 03:48 PM EST

Know thine cloud provider
Cloud computing require companies to understand compliance and regulation. Third parties will play a big role in regulated industries.
06/29/2009 02:58 PM EST

 

Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conf.
7/13/2009 to 7/16/2009
New Orleans
Microsoft

OSCON (Open Source Convention)
7/20/2009 to 7/24/2009
San Jose
O'Reilly Media

XBRL Technology Workshop & Summit
7/28/2009 to 7/30/2009
Santa Clara
XBRL US

ACM SIGGRAPH
8/3/2009 to 8/7/2009
New Orleans
ACM SIGGRAPH

OpenSource World (formerly LinuxWorld)
8/12/2009 to 8/13/2009
San Francisco
IDG World Expo


 
print Printable version 
Most Read Latest News Blog Resources
Kapow automates website data retrieval
Kapow Technology's Web Data Server 7.0 can be used to create modules that navigate through...

Oracle's Fusion 11g lays groundwork for ERP platform
Fusion's components are standards-based and integrated, but some abilities are lost if non...

COBOL’s future lies in the clouds
After 50 years of use in businesses, COBOL is still lingering around mainframes. But the s...

Digg!  Digg
Reddit  Reddit
Slashdot  Slashdot
Share on facebook  Facebook
Share on Twitter  Twitter

Zeichick's Take: Tooling Up With CodeGear


By Alan Zeichick
January 11, 2007 — 
CodeGear, the tools spin-off from Borland, has got some folks with great ideas. I hope they're able to pull them off.

Last week, I drove across California Highway 17, a beautiful but traffic-infested road, over to Scotts Valley and "The House That Philippe Built," the giant campus created by legendary Borland leader Philippe Kahn. CodeGear occupies one of the building's six wings—a far cry from the days when Borland filled the space to overflowing. Today, all the Borland folk have left Scotts Valley; it's CodeGear country now.

My hosts were two longtime tools gurus: David Intersimone (better known as David I, the voice of the Delphi community) and Michael Swindell, the new VP of products. We had a wonderful time reminiscing about the good old days, the bad old days, and what lies ahead for CodeGear, which has been set up as a wholly owned subsidiary of Borland.

One thing they both emphasized is that CodeGear is truly operating as an autonomous unit: As long as the spin-off hits its financial goals, it can do just about whatever it likes without running back to Tod Nielsen, Borland's CEO, for approval. That includes bringing back the old "Turbo" brand, for example, for low-priced (and free) tools intended for consultants, enthusiasts and students. It also includes working with companies other than Borland on technology development, joint marketing and integration.

We discussed, for example, the likelihood of partnerships between CodeGear and Borland competitors in the application life-cycle management market, such as HP's Mercury division, or Serena or even IBM Rational. According to Intersimone and Swindell, that's entirely possible within CodeGear's charter. However, that assumes that HP Mercury, Serena and IBM Rational would see a benefit from playing with CodeGear. Time will tell if that comes to pass.

CodeGear's mission is very different from that of Borland. Borland's goal is to sell high-end application life-cycle management software to corporate bigwigs: big sales of hundreds of seats costing many thousands of dollars. That places it in competition with the likes of Serena, IBM Rational and even Microsoft's Team System. The Borland message is about making the enterprise more competitive, reducing the costs and risks of software development and so on. The character of specific developer-facing tools doesn't factor into it. As Swindell put it, "The CIO doesn't care about IDEs."

However, developers care about IDEs, and so do development department managers. They're the people CodeGear wants to talk to. To its enterprise customers, CodeGear's message will be about enhancing the productivity of individual developers and development teams. CodeGear will try to show that tools, such as JBuilder, Delphi and Interbase, will help programmers write better code more quickly, and collaborate more effectively.

The enthusiasm and, well, freshness in CodeGear is palpable; it reminds me of the Borland of old (before Del Yocam took the reins back in 1996). Intersimone and Swindell were talking about developing new tools, such as for dynamic languages and for Web-based collaboration, and have a real vision, the sort of vision that Borland used to have before it started acquiring companies to build ever-more-expensive tool suites.

If CodeGear has the funding and autonomy to bring that vision to fruition, it could succeed. I hope it does.

Alan Zeichick is editorial director of SD Times. Read his blog at ztrek.blogspot.com.


Share this link: http://www.sdtimes.com/link/29957
 

Add comment


Name*
Email*  
Country     


  • Comment
  • Preview
Loading