Re: Yo, Borland Marketing...

In article <43469db4$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
mjwallinNO_SPAM@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx says...
> 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.
>

Well, more customers SHOULD be, it is their responsibility as consumers
to be critical of a company's relationship with them.


> Other software vendors take a much more proactive approach with their
> customers. Here is an example:
>
> As much as I despise Computer Associates (CA),
<SNIP>
> 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.

Well, they certainly screwed up the Clipper flagship and drove it into
oblivion WITHOUT marketing. I would presume that Delphi could possibly
suffer from the same fate if Borland marketing doesn't get their
proverbial heads out of their asses.

>
> 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.

Totally agreed here. It is really difficult to understand why people
don't see the advantages of Borland tools. Itt was very difficult to
find a job doing Delphi where I live and most certainly would be more
difficult in other places.

There was a guy at my last job, he was one of those midnighters, the
kind with purple hair, 5'11", about 120 lbs, used to work for a game
developer. My first day on the job, I was asking him where the Delphi
disks were located so I could intoall them. He goes into this diatribe
about he couldn't understand how a "teaching language" such as Pascal
could be used for serious development. Of course that raised the
Microsoft Zealot flag instantly.

I listened and shook my head. He was gone a couple of months later due
to some other issues but those comments he made have stuck with me.
Borland would have absolutely no reaction to someone like that and that
is the sad fact about the entire Borland marketing scheme.

When the mainstream VB'ers started that petition, THAT was the time
Borland should have stood up and SHOUTED, "Hey, come over here and see
what we can do for you!". They should have written some VB->Delphi
conversion tools, wrote conversion guides, etc. It would have been a
HUGE deal to the VB'ers seeing that someone was actually listening
to them because we all know that M$ has totally ignored the petition
and their arguments.
.

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