Re: Yo, Borland Marketing...
- From: "Mark J. Wallin" <mjwallinNO_SPAM@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 07 Oct 2005 12:23:09 -0400
Eddie Shipman wrote:
> Conserning this part of Allen Bauer's Blog from September 29
> (http://blogs.borland.com/abauer)
>
> I'd be interested in knowing exactly what the "marketeers" intended to
> do with that level of detail and if they were actually going to do
> something about the lack of marketing of the Delphi product to the
> powers that be that make the decisions.
I try not to be critical, but Borland's sales and marketing leaves much
to be desired. I have been a Delphi purchaser/user (professional
version) since Delphi 1. In all of that time, I have only received an
occasional email telling me when the next version is available.
Other software vendors take a much more proactive approach with their
customers. Here is an example:
As much as I despise Computer Associates (CA), they do stay on top of
the selling end of the software business. Last year, I purchased a copy
of the backup application ArcServe, somehow forgetting one of my prime
directives: Never buy anything made, sold or even breathed upon by CA
(in my defense, I think I forgot to check who the manufacturer was).
Recently, my support subscription to this extremely disappointing
package ended. I got an email from CA reminding me of this fact, which
I ignored, not wanting to throw good money after bad. Then I got a call
from a rep of the third party vendor (imagine, from a live person!)
wanting to know whether or not I was renewing my subscription and IF
NOT, WHY NOT! I told them of my displeasure with the software and that
I was considering another product, and the rep said "That's good
feedback, I will tell CA what you think and why you are not renewing".
CA is in the business of selling big ticket software and have only
managed to stay in business by going after customers and hanging on for
dear life. Never mind that most of what they sell is now third rate
sludge. They are good at sales and marketing, if not product
development. I realize that CA is a far larger company with money to
burn. In fact, I believe that they make most of their money from
supporting old mainframe business rather than from their PC products,
which is understandable as they seem to be clueless about PC
applications and prefer to 'milk' their acquisitions for revenue
spending as little as possible to upgrade them. Whatever the reason,
their marketing department is apparently large, has a big budget, and is
well trained.
It almost breaks my heart to see how Delphi and other Borland
development products are ignored or falsely maligned. I recently
started to take a look at Visual Studio 2003 and was appalled at what
skimpy tools (compared to Borland) they give you in this most popular
development platform for Windows and .NET. The first thing I noticed
was how much more awkward and difficult programming is vs. the Borland
implementation. I imagine that if one began programming in C from the
start with MS tools, MSVS looks pretty good. However, being spoiled by
Delphi, I was amazed to find that in the MS version of C#, events are
not a part of the property inspector, that you have to jump through
hoops just to do a simple on-click event that Delphi or Borland C#
programmers do without even thinking about.
I have a C/C# programming friend who is after me to learn the
'Microsoft' way so we can collaborate on projects on his terms. As MS
is a far more marketable programming skill at this point, he is totally
against even looking at Borland products, even thought he has a vague
understanding that the Borland ID and VCL they are far superior to what
he uses, but I can't argue with his rationale. Programming jobs in MS
shops are far more plentiful than those with Borland shops. Borland's
marketing has to assume some of the blame for this as they are
apparently not increasing market share despite having a vastly superior
product. There are a lot of things they could have done but didn't.
I myself have the luxury of using Delphi as I am the entire IT
department of my present employer, a law firm that is clueless regarding
software development and are only concerned with the results: software
that work the way they want. However, if I had to go out and get
another job, I would be up against it as I am far too old to start
competing for jobs with my limited knowledge of MS tools.
Mark J. Wallin, Ph.D.
"Walloon"
.
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