Re: Stop the negativism!

Simon Kissel wrote:

I am certain that there are enough enterprise shops that use
Borland's products that are not represented in the download
statistics from the web or newsgroup discussions, I am certain there
are a lot of small single developers or developers abroad etc...
that once again do not participate. I

That I don't agree with.

We've heard this for a few years from Borland, whenever they were
told that it's strange that they are not doing what their customers
asked for.

What part of Ron's quote above do you not agree with? Do you *seriously*
believe that anything close to a majority of existing customers participate
in these groups and/or would be downloading the free Turbo products? Or is
it you don't think any enterprise shops use Delphi?

The percentage of customers that have *ever* visited these groups is small,
and the number that are regulars is smaller again.

Ok, so what's next? If there are customers who don't use newsgroups
and don't use QC, there must be SOME way to spot them somewhere,
right?

For Borland, yes. They have numbers on registrations, on support calls, on
inquiries, on feedback from sales channels, and on market research they
conduct various companies that are both existing and potential customers.
They also have counts on how many read BDN articles or download sample code
and other items from Code Central.

Here's a suggestion, take a look at all the Delphi .Net articles in Code
Central - download numbers are public. I tried the following search, not all
are .Net but it'll at least give you some idea of numbers there:
http://cc.borland.com/results.aspx?keywords=.net&prod=1&cat=12%2c13%2c2%2c3%2c17%2c1

One might think they might become visible through the component
vendors - after all, I would expect enterprise customers to make well
use of that market, as for them it's always cheaper to buy in say a
database access component for Oracle than producing it inhouse.

Some things to consider:
- for Delphi .Net, those looking for 3rd party components are not limited to
those vendors specifically targeting Delphi/VCL, the source of components is
much wider for .Net and so Delphi-specific vendors are going to get less of
the pie.
- possibly the perceived need for additional components is less in .Net
(possibly its more, I don't *really* know on this point)
- there have been discussions on this before but: many here over-estimate
how many Delphi users actually use many - if any 3rd-party components. And
opposite of what you state, Enterprise-level customers are *less* likely to
use them, the highest use I see are in apps made by independent or very
small shops. At least one reason is larger companies don't want the added
support headaches - those extra components aren't supported by Borland and
they are more likely to want a single support source for the product.

--
Wayne Niddery - Winwright, Inc (www.winwright.ca)
"The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as
sacred as the laws of God and there is not a force of law and public
justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence." - John Adams


.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Stop the negativism!
    ... We've heard this for a few years from Borland, ... told that it's strange that they are not doing what their customers ... Download Counters data has covered all countries Borland does ... The number of registrations since Delphi 2005 does not give them ...
    (borland.public.delphi.non-technical)
  • Re: Help for deciding my future roadmap
    ... Try to convince MS customers. ... biggest non-English speakers and Delphi buyers. ... means Big Support... ... VB, VC, C++, Java or Delphi. ...
    (borland.public.delphi.non-technical)
  • Re: Actually I am a little bit disappointed...
    ... For customers desiring this new functionality they will have ... > codebase to Win64 would be undesirable by anyone. ... MS is not stopping its support for ... I am in no way against a Delphi 64 and I am not ...
    (borland.public.delphi.non-technical)
  • Re: Win32 Needs
    ... There are many different ways Delphi is used, ... but *their* customers certainly do, I would guess somewhere between 25% and ... going to stop working if subsequent versions don't support unicode. ...
    (borland.public.delphi.non-technical)
  • Re: [Full-disclosure] Interesting fun with Cisco VPN Client Privilege Escalation Vulnerabilities
    ... "Customers who purchase direct from Cisco but who do not hold a Cisco ... "The product that you requested support for is an older product that has ... "The Cisco VPN Client for Windows is available for download from the ...
    (Full-Disclosure)