Borland and the Sub-Enterprise

From: Henry (none_at_none.com)
Date: 02/24/05 

Date: Thu, 24 Feb 2005 12:18:59 +0000

I propose the following theory:

(a) Delphi Professional competes with Microsoft Visual Studio. They have
similar capabilities, and solve similar requirements.

(b) Before .NET, Borland clearly had the technical lead. Microsoft
offered ease of use (as long as you were only doing "simple" things)
with Visual Basic, and power with Visual C++. Borland offered both with
Delphi.

(c) With C# and .NET Microsoft have successfully made their own product,
which combines ease-of-use with a very good framework and a decent
language. Visual Studio has the traditional benefits of Delphi.

(d) Borland do not have sufficient resources (or management are not
willing to dedicate sufficient resources) to maintain their old lead
over Microsoft. It took 3 version of Galileo before arriving at Delphi
2005, their first product can compare to Visual Studio 2003. Despite
these 3 major revisions (Visual Studio is essentially at version 1.1),
Delphi 2005 Professional is not drastically better than Visual Studio
2003 in any way. It is much less stable though, and requires much more
memory/CPU. In other words, it is not particularly better featured, but
the engineering is of a much lower quality.

(e) Whidbey is expected in Q3. This is not vapourware; just by
downloading the beta or CTPs, we can see that it is going to be far, far
better than Visual Studio 2003. Considering how long it's taken Borland
to get from C# Builder & the .NET preview compiler included with D7 to
Delphi 2005, it would be astonishing if they could even match all of its
significant features before Microsoft are demonstrating Orcas. That
Delphi Professional could regain its old lead over concurrent Microsoft
tools is barely conceivable, unless Borland invest far more resources in
it than they do now.

(f) The bulk of Borland's revenue comes from "Enterprise customers", to
the extent that their SEC filings now talk about $Million+ sales. The
people who make major purchases for these types of organisations do not
care whether it is easier to parse {...} or begin...end. They think in
terms of "solutions" which increase the efficiency of their high-level
business processes. They like the ALM and SDP buzzwords. The actual use
of the IDE for coding is relegated to low-level programmers (aka code
monkeys).

(g) Therefore, the ROI for Borland on the basic
VCL/compiler/editor/debugger is much lower than the ROI on new or better
integrated ALM/SDP tools. Hence as far as upper management are
concerned, the only requirement for the basic (aka Professional) IDE is
that it is not so inferior to Visual Studio that the code monkeys will
rise up in revolt against their project managers. Any further investment
will produce better returns when spent on ALM/SDP tools (including those
included in higher SKUs, such as ECO).

(h) Small shops and single developers are thus no longer a market in
which Borland is prepared to invest. The various components of Delphi
Professional will continue to be enhanced as the requirement of the
Enterprise market dictates. Sometimes new features in
Enterprise/Architect will "push down" what used to be considered
Enterprise features into the Professional package. As long as customers
continue to buy the Professional bundle, Borland will continue selling
it, but they will not specifically invest in it.

(i) Borland will, of course, have to deny this. "Our .NET strategy is to
remain ahead of Visual Studio Team System. We have surrendered
everything other than the "Enterprise market" to Microsoft. We have no
particular reason to think that we will hold our enterprise lead any
better than we held our VCL/language lead, but it buys us another few
years. By that time, we might have thought of something else, otherwise
we will just collect our bonuses and bloated severance packages and move
on. While I have your attention, would you like to buy some of the BORL
stock to which my bonuses are linked?"

Relevant Pages

  • Re: 64-bit Windows for AMD 64 is here...
    ... Since competition is everywhere and restless to say the ... Delphi is like having started in 1994 a new project in Turbo Pascal. ... Even if Borland will work hard to match the productivity of VS .NET, ... will always be chasing Microsoft, wich is not an easy task. ...
    (borland.public.delphi.non-technical)
  • Re: VB6, VB2005, or Something Else?
    ... I once thought the same way, that Microsoft could have done better, let's say like Borland did with Delphi. ... OO and structure changes could easily have been added without breaking existing language features. ... I understand that you've got burned by the VB.NET changes, but what I don't understand is that you are moving completely to Delphi. ...
    (microsoft.public.vb.general.discussion)
  • Re: Delphi to be integrated into ms visual studio ?!?
    ... "To CodeGear, side of the development tools, the situation will be cleared ... If it had remained within Borland, ... Visual Studio. ... This policy also signs the stop of Delphi as autonomous IDE. ...
    (borland.public.delphi.non-technical)
  • Re: My rant about the "throw out delphi and re-write it in C#" crowd.
    ... fired across the bow of the Microsoft C++ products were AWESOME. ... Borland was fearless in putting itself out there and asking developers ... Programmers traditionally defied conventional ... don't recall seeing a Delphi ad in those for years. ...
    (borland.public.delphi.non-technical)
  • Embrace and Extend, Borland Style...
    ... Embrace and Extend, Borland Style... ... understandably large amount of time talking about the Microsoft .Net ... and will soon be deployed in Delphi 8 for the .Net Framework. ... Galileo is Borland's next generation IDE that builds on the code base of ...
    (borland.public.delphi.non-technical)