August 20, 2007
CodeGear CEO Clarifications
First of all, it was a nice surprise to receive a long and detailed email only a couple of hours after publishing my blog post. The email has a very informal tone, with general comments about my blog and other direct information I'd rather omit. As Jim later told me, it was meant to be personal, not public. However, as the matter touched by my post is relevant, he agreed with my request for posting some quotes from the email.
In the email, Jim acknowledges that investment in the tools business by Borland was limited in past years, and that his role is to "focus the organization on the needs of the development community and return the company to growth".
The Quarterly Results
The mail has two key points. One is on Tod Nielsen (Borland CEO) comments to the quarterly results. Jim Douglas says he is "a very competitive person and reading the comments in print certainly wasn't a lot of fun. However, Tod and [Jim] had worked on the wording together in advance of the release and they reflect the facts." The rationale behind those comments relates with shareholder expectations.
On the other hand, he confirms that "Borland has strategically committed to investors that the ALM sector of the [company] will drive the business and support their expectations for growth".
"Selling" CodeGear
The most important concept of the email, at least in my opinion is the second point, regarding the future of CodeGear. Consistently with what was told in the past, Jim confirms that "selling the company is still the plan of record and consistent with the strategic needs of both organizations. Despite consistently generating profit and positive cash flow, I didn't feel like [CodeGear] was prepared to thrive as a stand alone entity when I joined at the beginning of the second quarter."
There is no specific time frame for the ownership change, but "this is the path we are on". I think this is very good news... Again, what is the price?
9 Comments
CodeGear CEO Clarifications
A sale can't last years... and shouldn't be announced this way. "Hey guys, we have a company to sell, do you know anybody wanting it?". I am afraid it will just spread more doubts about Codegear future, despite the health shown. A development tool is a long time commitment, they are just scaring new adopters and current ones.Comment by Luigi D. Sandon on August 20, 17:06
CodeGear CEO Clarifications
We have been working with CodeGear Products, we expend a lot of money developing over Delphi/C++ but we moved after the last versions where CodeGear was not able to address the issues of the product. The worst thing that should happen to the users should be that CodeGear become owned by others. If for example IBM will purchase CodeGear, for sure will kill Delphi an d C++ from the supported systems. Why? Because they're not 'Hot' and there are other products that have over 70% if the market. Codegear is making a big mistake instead of solving the issues in the current product, where they get the money, they are expending the time launching 'Hot' products to attract investment. Ok should be a good strategy for the Company, but not for the customers, that are waiting to have a usable product for a long time.Comment by on August 20, 20:18
CodeGear CEO Clarifications
Regardless of what is good for Borland, selling CodeGear to another entity clearly goes beyond just good for CodeGear, but rather essential for its survival. As for CodeGear thriving as a standalone entity - it certainly stands a better chance alone than with Borland. No one who looks at the track record can argue that fact. Unless Borland suddenly finds some magic way to turn itself around, it is going to go down the tubes, it would be a shame to watch them take down a perfectly profitable and sustainable business when it happens. Here is hoping for sooner than later, but they'll have to be more honest about what CodeGear is really worth based on its sales record to date. YOu can't sell a company for what it could be worth once you stop screwing it up at ever turn. I'm not sure Borland is really ready to face a fair sale price.Comment by Xepol on August 21, 00:20
CodeGear CEO Clarifications
"Again, what is the price?" Another outstanding post Marco. I was hopeful that when Borland decided to shed CodeGear that these great dev tools might survive. But when I hear Borland executives pandering to investors with such shortsighted irrational and harmful talk it makes me realize that CodeGear is just in a different death grip than the one it was in before. They leach the blood out of the dev tools and then complain enough blood wasn't forthcoming. What gall.Comment by Stephen on August 21, 02:34
CodeGear CEO Clarifications
Long time ago, Borland decided to rename itsefl as Inprise. What's their name now? Then decided to take Interbase to the Open Source Movement. Now is not. So far, they decided to bet on Linux with Kylix... and we all know (or not) what happened. Then Winforms.... (well some decision where meant to be regreted :) I hope that CodeGear is not one of that expensive experiments...Comment by Salvador Gomez Retamoza [http://salvador.oversistemas.com] on August 21, 20:57
CodeGear CEO Clarifications
Ok, I am missing something here. They want to sell the part of the business that makes money and keep the bit that doesn't (and to me has little prospect of significantly doing so) ! Someone is in denial and I hope it isn't us. How about this for out of the box ideas 1) They sell the ALM division and keep Codegear or 2) We (as in developpers and Codegear management) buy Codegear ourselves. I am not sure how many of us there are but a few thousand x $10,000 each plus the rest from the bank should do it ?Comment by John on August 21, 23:44
CodeGear CEO Clarifications
Can't be easy for Tod and Jim. They have lot of damage to repair with limited resources and this is a difficult and unpredictable business at the best of times. I sure wouldn't want to be making their decisions. I thought Kylix would be a winner which would revolutionize the Linux desktop world, putting Borland at the center of a new movement. Wrong. Borland stuck to it, investing in up to 3 versions, they didn't just give up. But still wrong. Then I doubted Delphi for .NET would sell, because, well, C# is basically Delphi in C syntax. Who would want a Delphi.NET? Yet obviously people do. And then there's us; folks with varying levels of dependency on these tools and therefore a little scared, perhaps, basically all well-meaning tho' vocal with our own ideas how things should be run. I have just installed D2007 and am sufficiently satisfied to now move my code base across from D5 (not a trivial thing), so I hope CodeGear remains fit and healthy (whoever owns it) and I will be first in line for a Win32 version with Generics. All speed to the developer team and Solomon's wisdom to management, I say.Comment by Dephi user on August 22, 14:45
CodeGear CEO Clarifications
Thank you very much Marco. You brought to all of us a lot through your excellent books, blogs and conferences. In my company we are the typical case. We bought D3, D5, D6 and D7. D8, 2005, 2006 were such a complete disaster for professional developers that we have started to move new code to C# over the last 2 years. We believe that Win32 code is light faster than .Net code but we do not feel upgrading to a newer Delphi is worth it. We even haven't tried D2007 and we won't. It is just too late. No support for Unicode, no support for 64 bits, no support for .Net 2.0, poor documentation, etc. For us the decision was taken when we realized no a lot of developer would join us if we were still a Delphi shop. We had to move to C# to attract developers. And that will be very hard for CodeGear to turn around.Comment by Michael on September 3, 17:31
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CodeGear CEO Clarifications
Comment by Serg [] on August 20, 11:57