Re: Delphi Community missing the .NET-boat

From: Peter Sleuth (noemail_at_nospam.com)
Date: 10/07/03 

Date: Tue, 7 Oct 2003 00:09:13 +0200

Luigi,

<see comments below>

"Luigi D. Sandon" <cp@sandon.it> wrote in message
news:3f81d09c@newsgroups.borland.com...
> > developers at large corporations. These guys there did write most of
their
> > inhouse-applications during the last few years in Java, but now they are
> > turning to .NET for frontends and intranet-apps. And that is where these
> > IDEs will make most of their revenues.
>
> Ok, I may agree, but some people are asserting "almost all new projects
and
> products for Windows will be launched on the .NET-platform". Since now, I
> didn't see that trend. Maybe it will increase soon, but I am still waiting
> Java to show it.

Just look at Enterprise developers in big fortune 500 companies. All Java
shops nowadays (and some C++, and some .NET, and also some Delphi32, but
predominantly Java).

> Anyway, if you are right Borland is targeting again the Enterprise (as in
> Yocam's era), forgetting that Delphi has been used, maybe more outside USA
> than within, as a general purpose tool much powerful than VB and VB like
> tools, and wep apps later - mainly used in enterprises to give access to
> corporate data - yet not as complex as C++ to learn and use, plus a RAD
> approach useful to reduce GUI development times.

Borland is definitely targeting the enterprise nowadays, but that doesn´t
mean they are abandoning small development shops either. They are actually
trying to achieve both, targeting the enterprise while maintaining their old
user base. They are probably targeting the enterprise a bit more then us old
borland customers nowadays, but I do not think that we have to worry about
this. After all someone has to pay for the bills, and if the revenues made
with big fortune 500 customers helps Borland to give them room for continued
Delphi development, that is fine for me.

Let´s have a look on the last couple of press releases from borland (taken
from
http://www.corporate-ir.net/ireye/ir_site.zhtml?ticker=borl&script=400 ):

      1-Oct-2003 2003 Borland Conference to be Held November 2-5 in San
Jose, California
      25-Sep-2003 Borland Commends Computer History Museum Tribute to
Company Founder Philippe Kahn
      15-Sep-2003 Mobile Industry Welcomes the Launch of Borland
C++BuilderX
      15-Sep-2003 Borland Targets World's Largest Class of Software
Developers: Launches Borland C++BuilderX and Borland Enterprise Studio for
C++
      10-Sep-2003 Borland Deepens Support for Enterprise Adoption of
Microsoft .NET Framework Technologies: Launches Borland Together Edition for
Microsoft Visual Studio .NET
      4-Sep-2003 Borland and IBM Expand Global Agreement to Provide
Enterprise Database Developers with C#Builder for the Microsoft .NET
Framework
      3-Sep-2003 Borland Advances J2EE Performance Testing with Launch of
Optimizeit ServerTrace 2.0 DataCenter
      21-Aug-2003 Borland Names Brian 'Boz' Elloy Senior Vice President of
Software Products
      19-Aug-2003 Borland Appoints Blake Stone as Chief Technology Officer
      18-Aug-2003 Borland Software Corporation and Spectrum Systems
Collaborate to Enhance Software Capabilities of Federal Government Agencies
      18-Aug-2003 Raytheon Selects Borland Software to Power New Satellite
System for U.S. Government; Performance of Environmental Information System
Accelerated with Borland Technology

Now count the number of times that you find the words "enterprise",
"industry", "j2EE" "c++" and so on in the headlines of the press releases.
Well, I would say that Borland is definitely targeting the corporate
enterprise developers nowadays, but - different from the "inprise"-vision -
they try to satisfy there old customer base of small development shops at
the same time. While this is not easy, I think they do actually quite well
(Delphi7 is after all a category killer on Win32, leaving VB6 and VC6 in the
dust).

Now let´s have a look in one of their recent Quarterly reports
(http://biz.yahoo.com/e/030814/borl10-q.html). By the way, in order to
understand Borlands vision I think it is quite valueable to read such
reports very carefully, line by line. There are some pretty boring parts,
but then some other parts will open your eyes immediately.

Some interesting parts about their platform strategy:

". Leadership Across Platforms. We believe that our success hinges, in part,
             on our ability to deliver best-in-class solutions across a wide
range of
             technology platforms, including Java and .NET. As part of this
commitment,
             we released the following new products during the three months
ended June
             30, 2003:

               o Janeva, a new solution that is designed to enable
cross-platform mobility
                  by offering companies a secure and scalable means of
linking J2EE and
                 .NET;
               o C#Builder, a completely new Borland product that offers a
comprehensive,
                  design-driven solution for the development of .NET
applications; and
               o JBuilder 9, the most recent version of our leading Java
development
                  environment which offers users greater integration with
our other
                  application lifecycle components."Here you can see a clear
focus on delivering on Java and .NET, but this doesn´t mean they are
abandoning other areas at the same time.

Now there is a part where Borland divides all revenues into different
categories. The most interesting for us is the category "Develop" where all
revenues with IDEs and related products are included. Now comes the quote:

" Develop includes two major categories:
     Java, which includes JBuilder, Java Studio and Optimizeit, and .NET,
which
     includes Delphi, C++Builder, Kylix and C++ Mobile Edition. "

Okay, that means that Borland has internally already substituted products
targeting Windows (Delphi,C++Builder) and Linux (Kylix) into a common .NET
group. Does this make sense to add Win32+Linux products to a .NET group?
Yes, it does, because quite soon most windows revenues will come from their
.NET products (C#Builder, Delphi.NET) and Kylix - while being a product for
Linux - is actually targeting mostly DelphiWin32 developers that want to
play around with Linux, so it is actually a product targeting Windows
developers and therefore belongs to the .NET group as well. .NET is here not
standing for the technical platform, but for the developers associated with
it, meaning Delphi-Win32 and Kylix developers too.

Now another interesting quote from the report:

"Solution Selling. Our move to selling entire application lifecycle
solutions to our customers is designed to result in larger contracts with
our customers. In the three months ended June 30, 2003, we entered into
102 sales contracts over $100,000, up from 93 such contracts in the three
months ended March 31, 2003. In addition, a number of these transactions
in the three months ended June 30, 2003 included multi-product sales. We
believe our transition from single product sales to solution selling will
provide us with an opportunity for growth in the future."

So do you still think they are not targeting enterprise customers? They
actually want to transform from single product sales to solution selling
(meaning selling all their ALM stack as a complete solution). Is there
anything wrong with it? No, as long as they don´t abandon their small
developer customers at the same time, there is nothing wrong with it. It is
actually quite a convincing strategy, if you ask me. If Borland executes its
vision over the next years well, than they will be doing quite well, too.
If Borland really succeeds to be the future switzerland of development, if
they succeed in being a major force in the Java and .NET markets, if they
succeed by not only selling IDEs but also an full integrated ALM stack
including CaliberRM, StarTeam, OptimizeIT, Together, well, then we should
immediately hurry up and buy some borland stock (and hold it over a time
period of 2-3 years)!

> I am working on a complex application for network security, cross
platform.
> It is a mix of C/C++ code (for very low level programming, driver/kernel
> level) and Delphi/Kylix code (data analysis, storage, and GUI). I have to
> work with raw stream of data I have to process, thus using a lot untyped
> pointers and assembler code to speed up processing (up to hundreds of
> gygabytes per day, we have a 20TB storage system for raw data only).

cool stuff.

> I guess we are not the "common" corporate user. For example, reverse
> engineering in .NET is too easy for our requirements. We have a complex
> client that cannot be easily developed as an "intranet" app, and Windows
> Forms looks too "primitive", and slow too. Until now, I was sure Delphi
> could handle the task. If Borland think Delphi must be closer to the old
> VB/ASP than C++, we will move to C++. And having cross-platform
> requirements, if we have to used a p-code envirnment we will move to Java,
> not .NET.

Well, Delphi 7 definitely can handle that task. Delphi.NET will also be able
to handle that task, and the upcoming Delphi7 update in 2004 will be even
better for that. So no reason to get nervous after all.

> Only I'd like to know what Borland wants to go today - so I can make my
> plans too.

Please allow Borland to change their plans if they have to, after all, they
need to make money selling developer tools, and if the market changes
quickly, they have to adopt to that as fast as possible as well. Only
Microsoft can effort it to hold onto their Roadmap, they do not need to make
any money from selling developer tools, but Borland has to.

Please also don´t forget that Borland is a publically listed company
trading on a stock exchange. They cannot too freely talk about future plans,
without risking any legal action. I think John Kaster already hinted as
expressively as he can (without the lawyers coming after him).

Quoting John Kaster from a post he did yesterday:
"It's quite simple: we thought we could do A and B at the same
time, and now we are doing A, then B"

Do you need any interpretation of this? There is an Delphi7 update coming in
2004, that is for sure, and if the "B" Kaster is talking about coming soon
after the "A", if this "B" is the same "B" that was considered in the first
open letter in April, then there is a high probability that we are not going
to see just a service pack, but a new major release of Delphi Win32 in 2004
;-)

Do not expect Kaster or Thornhill to say this even more verbally, they can´t
and won´t.

Best regards,

Peter

> --
> Luigi D. Sandon
> cp@sandon.it
>
>

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