Re: Stop the negativism!

Wayne,

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?

You've quoted the response to this question. But I'll give you a
bonus: "Developers abroad" are fully covered in my data. The
Download Counters data has covered all countries Borland does
business in. And then I've got the input from Borland Brazil.
Germany was also covered in my document, and as a german I can
tell you that things in the big german Delphi forums look just as
outlined.

In case you are a french-speaking canadian, go to
http://www.developpez.net/forums/ and find out what the
french think - at least a lot of clicks to my roadmap article
are coming from there ;)

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?

No. I've never said this. I've said that the samples taken from far
more than those two source (go read my post again, it's all there)
all point to the same direction.

These newsgroups user here sure are a minority of existing customers.
But their opinions are not that much different from the non-newsgroup
using customers, as it appear. Ok, so we maybe have 97-99% of
all users in here thinking that my alternative roadmap might be better
than the current one. And in the outside world it's maybe only 80-90%.
Heck, even if it's only 70% because there is a huge chunk of customers
not leaving any kind of trace in the samples I've taken - does that really
matter? It's not like we are in a 49 vs 51% situation here.

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.

No, they have not.

- The number of registrations since Delphi 2005 does not give them
any information about if people care more about .NET or native features
in their todays work.
- I doubt the number of support calls is high.
- Inquiries? These are inquiries
- They are unable to gather data from sales channels. Delphi 6 was the
last version that enabled them to do this. Delphi 7 bundled Kylix,
Delphi 8 probably only had very few sales, and Delphi 2005 and 2006
didn't give them any information about the platforms used either.
- There never has been any sign of active market research done by
Borland. Heck, if they had done this, we wouldn't be here discussing
all this right now, right?

I didn't say there could be other sources of information. But if they
exist, they are highly unlikely to represent a high % of customers not
covered by my samples, resulting in my general findings beeing
invalid.

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

Thanks for the link, just another data source. And surprise, surprise,
it's completely in line with the other data sources we've taken until now.

The highest download count for .NET code as in your link is 1497. The
highest download count for native code is 13523 (ok, this is a native
code screensaver, so let's take the second highest, "Indespensible
Components for DELPHI", 10080). 13% .NET, 87% native code.
By the way, the full first page of 20 results all is about native code.

Personally I have to say however, that this data source is a pretty bad
one, as this is a very old and outdated one (it includes even
Delphi 1) stuff. I wouldn't use it. But well, you've brought it up.

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.

If that was the case, one would expect those .NET component vendors
who are not coming from the Borland world to at least support Delphi.NET,
right? Like, say on their website that their components are also compatible
with BDS, or have a question about that in their FAQ, right? I've just
randomly visted a few vendors on a google search. The only one I've
found doing this was ComponentOne, which is no wonder as their stuff
is bundled with Borland products.

I think the data from those Borland Technology Partners that offer
both native code and .NET versions of their products is much much
more relevant here, don't you agree?

And we have that data. Parts of it are in my document, and well,
in the meantime those already have given lots of feedback through
various channels, too. While not for all, for many of them the
percentages I've found also match those of their component sales.

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.

We both can't provide any sampling data to prove this, so it's pointless.

I'm not going to convert this into a penis contest, but my customers include
Deutsche Post WorldNet / DHL, SAP, Bayer, Deutsche Bank. I'd
call those enterprise-level customers. And they buy and use components.

On my personal non-commercial side, I can assure you that the list
of subscribed CrossKylix users (remember, completely unsupported
by Borland) includes several Fortune 500 companies.

You don't have to believe this data, but please understand that I
don't think it's likely you've got a better insight into the enterprise
market than me ;)

Simon


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