The alternative Delphi roadmap to success

24 hours ago it was suggested to me by Borland staff that if could think of
a better
roadmap than their current one, I should mail it to them.

I just did this, and wish to share a copy of the mail with the community.

I'll also shortly put this up on the web to broaden the audience. Sorry for
the long
post, but I think this is relevant to all of us. Probably one or another
number will
be incorrect, I might have not used correct scientific statistical methods
etc, but
I still think it's worth thinking about.

Here we go:

1.) Market analysis
===================

I'll focus on the existing customers first. What do they use,
and what are they interested in?

Let's investigate a few sources to find out.

a) Turbo download counts
------------------------

Delphi Win32 48%
C++ Win32 24%
Delphi .Net 14%
C# .Net 14%

(After verifying with other download mirrors, these numbers
are believed to have a maximum deviation of 5%).

72% of people interested into Turbo Editions are interested
in native development.

b) Component market
-------------------

Delphi components that have seen updates/new releases by their
authors/component vendors during the last 2 weeks - data taken from
torry.net:

Delphi/C++ Win32: 19
Delphi .Net: 1
Kylix: 1

For comparsion, we are taking the Top 20 downloads from
delphipages.com:

http://www.delphipages.com/result.cfm?TD=20

Lot's of interesting data here. We'll have a look at the Top 3
downloads:

AVLLock Gold Download counts:

Delphi Win32: 18016
Delphi .NET: 1285

Interesting: The highest single-version download count is for
Delphi 7: 4688.

DISQLite3 Download counts:

Delphi Win32: 21089
Delphi .NET: 0 (n/a)

VCL Skin 4:

Delphi Win32: 52109
Delphi .NET: 0 (n/a)

c) Community feedback
---------------------

On Wednesday, October 04, 2006, Nick Hodges asked Borland customers
who decided not to upgrade to the current product offerings what the
reason of this decision was. There was an overwhelming feedback, both in
that blog's comments, as on the Borland public newsgroups.

The most frequent reasons for not upgrading given were
(not ordered, just the most frequent answers given picked out):

- Missing support for Win64
- It does not contain support for Unicode
- Missing upgrade path from previous version
- Previous product versions (Delphi 6 and 7 mentioned most often) are
equally good or better than current product offerings (speed,
stability)
- No interest in .NET, which recent product version are focussed on
- Bad product quality of recent product versions
- Bad documentation in recent product versions (Help)
- Switched to Visual Studio
- Missing Linux strategy
- Unsure about the future of Borland/DevCo
- Switched to FPC/Lazarus
- No Internet sales
- High pricing outside of the US

If we filter out all answers not related to the roadmap, IOW sales,
"no longer a customer" etc, this leaves us with:

- Missing support for Win64
- It does not contain support for Unicode
- Missing Linux strategy
- Bad product quality of recent product versions
- Bad documentation in recent product versions (Help)

Further, having a look outside this specific poll, there are
indicators that most people that communicate on the Internet about
Delphi are talking about Win32 - delphipraxis.net, Germany's biggest
Delphi forum (548.737 postings) has even closed it's Delphi.NET
subforum completely due to inactivity.

d) Borland quality central
--------------------------

For Delphi, the highest voted report with 738 votes is
"Create native 64-bit compiler/IDE that targets AMD64 and Intel's
64-bit (IA-32e) extensions". Also, Unicode is on the list (79 votes).
An additional request not mentioned yet is shipping dbexpress sources.

The other high-voted reports are about product defects.

For Delphi.NET, the highest voted entry has 220 votes, and is about
allowing the usage of VS plugins inside BDS.

For the TOP10 reports of Delphi, a total of 1651 votes was given.
For the TOP10 of Delphi.NET, a total of 316 votes was given.

84% of the votes given on QC are about native Delphi. Only 16% of
the votes are given for Delphi.NET.

e) Versions used
----------------

While we don't have an exact source for this, the findings above
indicate that there is a high number of Delphi users that haven't
upgraded at all during the last years - it appears that right now
there are much more users using Delphi 5,6,7 in production than
customers using Delphi 2006. Indicators for this are:

- Frequently, if people are asking on the newsgroups and on different
web forums, they mention they are using Version 5,6 or 7.
- Download counters at component websites like delphipages and torry
indicate that the most often downloaded versions are for Delphi 6
and 7.

This is interesting to note.

2.) Market analysis summary
===========================

Borland has often stated that voices raised on the Borland newsgroups
are non-representive to their customer base at whole.

However, by investigating all available information sources, it seems
like Borland is wrong about this.

We've seen that 72% of all Turbo Explorer downloads are about
native Delphi/C++ code for Win32. We've seen that more than 99% of
the Delphi component market are about native Delphi. We have seen
that 84% of the votes given in Borland's QC feedback system are
about native Delphi code.

We may safely assume that 80-90% of Delphi customers are interested
in native code.

3.) Groups of Delphi customers
==============================

I'll now divide the possible buyers for new Delphi releases into
the following categories:

a) Existing Delphi users, only doing native code, with no plans
to move to .NET in the foreseeable future.
Many of those are still using Delphi 5, 6 or 7. Some do this
because they think these versions are good enough or even
better than recent Delphi offerings for what they do.

b) Existing Delphi users, only doing native code with Delphi.
For new .NET products, they have switched to Visual Studio.
The most often reason given for this is that Borland's .NET
strategy is hopelessly lagging behind Microsoft.
Many of those probably are lost customers that will stick with
their current Delphi version to maintain their Win32 code.

c) Existing Delphi users, that are in the progress or interested
in moving their Win32 codebase to .NET now or in the near
future, or who use Delphi Win32 for one part of their work,
and Delphi.NET for others (for example ASP.NET)

d) Existing Delphi users, that now only do .NET with Delphi

e) New customers interested in doing .NET development

f) New customers interested in doing native code development

While we don't have numbers about sizes of the groups here
(this would be an interesting poll topic, though), I'm assuming
the following (yes, this part is speculative):

- From the data gathered in 1.), we can be pretty sure that a)
currently is the biggest group of people that could be interested
in buying new Borland products.

- For b), it might be possible to sell them new versions of
a Win32-focussed for a limited time, if gives them a huge benefit
for their remaining, non-ported native code.
It might also be possible, but hard, to make them switch
back from Visual Studio to BDS, if Borland manages to beat
Visual Studio feature-wise.
My impression is, that this group of people also is quite big -
maybe of the once well-known community "VIP"s, including
Book authors, TeamB members etc are in this group.

- Compared to a) and b), c) seems to be a small group.
There are a signs of life from them in the community.

- There is not much evidence available that group d) even
exists

- For e) we have the data from the Turbo Explorer downloads.
We may therefore assume that there might be interest for
this area. We don't have any data on what potentially
could be attractive about Delphi's .NET offerings for new
customers, compared to the competitor Visual Studio.

- Group f) seems to be small. However, this group has the
potential to grow rapidly. As Microsoft is leaving the native
RAD market behind (dropping native Visual Basic), Delphi
now again is the best solution for Win32 development. However,
this group probably right now is scared off because
Borland is not offering native target support for other
platforms becoming important to non-.NET-users, namely
Win64 and Linux.

3.) The current Delphi roadmap
==============================

Highlander
----------

Since the year 2002, Borland is focussing on .NET - for the
last 4 years all product releases had a clear focus on .NET, with
release cycles driven by .NET market needs.

The current Delphi roadmap lists Highlander as the next release,
with focus on .NET 2.0 exlusively. The roadmap says:
"There will be ongoing work for Win32 Delphi and Win32 C++ (such
as unit testing and additional refactorings) but the most of the
new work in Highlander will be focused on .NET 2.0.".

Comparing this with the results from our market analyis above,
we come to the following conclusions:

- Highlander does not include a single feature of the most
requested features in QC for Delphi/Win32
- The only highly-voted .NET feature voted for in QC, the
integration of VS plugins into BDS will not be in Highlander
- Native Win64, the No1 request from the customers, won't be
in Highlander
- Unicode, also one of the most often requested features, won't
be in highlander
- A Linux strategy won't be in highlander
- Product quality isn't mentioned at all on the Highlander roadmap,
neither is documentation quality.

Summing this up:

- Highlander does not contain even a single of the most requested
features of the native code customers
- Highlander does not contain the single most requested feature
on QC.
- In the .NET area, Highlander will not be competitive to Microsoft
Visual Studio offers. By the time Highlander will hit the market,
Microsoft will have released .NET 3.0.

Let's have a look at the groups of potential buyers for a new Delphi
version again:

- Highlander will offer next to nothing to group a). Especially
all customers still sticking with Delphi 5,6,7 won't upgrade.

- Group b) might be upgrading if they are currently using
Delphi 2005 or 2006, in the hope of getting more stable
IDE features. Many might instead stick to their current version,
as most new work is done in Visual Studio anyway

- Group c) might be upgrading

- Group d) will upgrade

- Group e) might buy the product

- Group f) might buy the product if they haven't bought a
previous releases (Turbo Delphi 2006) in the meantime, simply
because Highlander then will be the current product offering.
Without Highlander, those sales would instead go to
the 2006 version of Delphi. This makes this group irrelavant
for Highlander.

Summary:

Highlander will only sell to groups we have identified to be either
small or nonexistent.

As we know that 80-90% of the customers who bought Delphi 2006 did
so because of native development and are not represented on the
Borland roadmap, many of them might be leaving Borland, looking
for alternative solutions. In fact, from the feedback gathered
many only still are with Borland because right now because they
don't have a migration path away from Borland yet.

All in all, we can expect Highlander sales to be far worse compared
to the ones from Delphi 2006.

The conclusion is, that Highlander will be a failure.

"Delphi for Vista"
------------------

"Delphi for Vista" is planned to target the following things:

- Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF)
- Windows Communication Framework (WCF)
- Managed C++ support

This is interesting, as it sounds like a gigantic effort. It basically
means replicating everything Microsoft has done during the last years,
trying to catch up. The fun part is that the features planned do
no apply to any single group of current customers listed above. None
of the features mentioned has been requested by anyone. The market
for managed c++ is known to be a very small one, currently 100%
taken by Microsoft.

Looking at it, this seems be be an insane plan - attack Microsoft in
a small market they are years ahead with a 100% market share, while
leaving behind your complete own customer base and all markets you are
in yourself.

The motivation to put "Delphi for Vista" onto the roadmap appears to
be a huge miracle.

"No code name yet" Delphi/C++ for Win64
---------------------------------------

It doesn't have code name yet, it doesn't have a list of features
planned yet, and the release date sounds highly unrealistic - just
half a year after the biggest technological effort ever done at
Borland for the the product with no market "Delphi for Vista", a
Win64 release of Delphi is planned.

One has to think that there actually are no real plans for this yet,
and that this was planted onto the roadmap simply to reduce the
number of customers leaving Borland in frustration.

7, yes SEVEN years after the last native code innovation (Delphi 7,
Kylix) from Borland, only one single feature of those required by
the far majority of todays customers is going to implemented.

4.) Outlook
===========

From the information gathered, the conclusions taken and from the
impression the current roadmap gives, the conclusion is:

During the next few years, Borland/DevCo/BTP is going to lose about
80-90% of todays customers. This will be accelerated by the fact
that one of the most important factors to Delphi's success is the
component market. Due to the loss of Delphi customers, the component
market already is very fragile as it is today, with already more than
50% of all commercial Delphi component vendors either going out of
business or moving to other markets. As we have seen the component
market also is highly dominated by native code components. Borland
losing just another 20% or so their customers will mean that
the component market will finally break down completely.

Borland's roadmap implies a high risk that the whole Delphi market
and community will finally cease to exist. The roadmap appears
to be a complete harakiri.

Summing all this up we can say: If you are native Delphi code user,
a third-party component vendor, or part of the Delphi community,
you will have to act now. You'll have to urge Borland to completely
scrap the roadmap and create a new one from scratch, based on
actual customer needs.

If you fail to do this, you should start working on a migration plan
away from Delphi today. "Maybe they'll finally wake up in 2 or
3 years" won't help anymore, as it most likely will be to late by
then.

5.) The alternative Roadmap
===========================

So, what could be done to turn the tides?

It's quite simple, actually: Simply do exactly what your customers
ask you for. It's OK to have visions (and .NET clearly is one),
and it's also OK to implement them if you can afford it.

The point is:

Borland can no longer afford investing more and more time, energy and
money into visions instead of actual customer requirements.

Borland neads to completely scrap the current roadmap, and they need
to do it now. Then they should do a detailed market survey just as I
did, but with all the heaps of information they have in their hands.

And then, a new roadmap should be created. It could look like this:

Delphi 2007
-----------
- Preview of Win64 compiler (Commandline, Win32 IDE, no Win64 debugger
yet). RTL and non-visual VCL classes support for Win64.
- .NET 2.0 features that already are done and don't need much more
energy to finish
- Completely reviewed documentation. Working help system, possibly
merging in all Help info that was lost after Delphi 7.
- Partial Unicode support to proof that they are working on it
- Continue improving IDE stability. Make sure the IDE is snappy
and fast in the default installation mode, with the user having
to remove parts of the IDE
- Improve IDE support for C++
- Improve the C++ compiler

In the Delphi 2007 timeframe, also re-activate the community efforts
around Linux, so that a Linux RTL/VCL version can be done by the
community for Delphi 2008. Ship CrossKylix again on the partner-CD,
so that Delphi 2007 already inoffially will allow you working on
Linux ports of server/middleware/apache/etc applications.

Delphi 2008
===========
- Win64 compiler and Win64 debugger inside Win32 IDE
- Full Win32/Win64/Unicode VCL
- Linux compiler integrated into the IDE
- Partial Linux VCL provided by community project
- Linux remote debugger integrated into the Delphi IDE provided
by community project
- If there still is market demand for Delphi.NET, and you have
generated enough revenue with Delphi 2007 to be able to
afford it, start working on advanced .NET 3.0 features. If not,
feature freeze for .NET.
- Improve IDE support for C++
- Improve the C++ compiler

6.) Comparing the current and the alternative Roadmap
=====================================================

As we know, Delphi has lost market share massively. Therefore, it's
important to boost sales number quickly again and to generate revenue
before again investing into visions.

Let's compare the roadmaps:

The current Highlander plan is only attractive to roughly 10-20% of
Borlands current customers. My alternative plan will be attractive
to 80-90%.

My alternative plan comes with a nice bonus, too: As we
know there is a huge chunk of customers that haven't upgraded at all
during the last 4 years. We know that 100% of those customers are
doing 100% native code only, because Delphi5/6/7 don't support .NET.
You'll get revenue from all of them.

But there's more: The other big market player in native RAD Land,
Microsoft, has just left the fields. Native Win32 RAD will bring
in new customers. You are now able to conquer this market, instead
of competing with Microsoft on a market they define.

I'm not a C++ guy, but from 1a) we know that there still also
is a high interest in native RAD C++ development - the download
counts for C++ are twice as high as those for Delphi.Net! Therefore,
stop treating your C++ customers the way you did during the last
years, and go get their money, too.

Due to the roadmap, there also will be another group of new customers:

Those interested in producing fast, native applications for multiple
platforms.

I'll just give you one example: There is a gigantic market of PHP
users. There is a gigantic market for Linux-based web applications.

Both typically run under Linux.

So, reactive and refresh the old code you still got from Kylix, and
enable those markets to take full benefit of the RAD toolchain you
got (RAD IDE, dbexpress etc). Market Delphi as the ideal tool to
write Apache modules and PHP extensions (buy in
http://members.chello.be/ws36637/php4delphi.html, the technology
is already there). You'll become market leader on a gigantic big
market which still is growing every day, with next to no cost.

Summing this up:

Your current roadmap is based on implementing your visions instead of
customer requirements. Your current roadmap is based on fighting for
market share against the #1 leader, Microsoft. Your current roadmap
is full of expensive investments, consuming all your resources. Your
current roadmap is full of high risk, with very little to gain.

My proposed roadmap however is based on your customer requirements,
generating confidence and revenue among those quickly again. It's
also based on completeley taking over a still really big market with
no competitor who's much stronger than you in sight. It also includes
implementing paths to the future your customers will need. And it
includes conquering new attractive markets with very low risk, but
high possible gain.

Go, switch to the roadmap of success!

Greetings,

Simon Kissel


.

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