May 7, 2008
Goodbye Borland, Welcome Embarcadero
CodeGear, Borland's division specialized in development tools like Delphi and JBuilder, is being acquired by Embarcadero technology.
The news is floating around the web, moving from blog to blog, and sparkling newsgroup discussions... and will be like this for some time.
Embarcadero Technology, the company behind database management tools like ER/studio and DBArtisan, has signed an agreement with Borland to buy CodeGear, the division focused on development tools like Delphi and JBuilder (plus some database properties). I haven't seen the amount mentioned, but I have read only a fraction of the white papers and announcements... will read more and post more comments over the coming hours. Update: It was actually quite prominent, "approximately 23 million USD".
My initial reaction? Quite positive I have to say. The two companies have a similar audience (even if Embarcadero probably sells more to larger development shops), similar tools, a similar independence and cross-platform appeal, and even a similar look and feel in the web sites (which might not be a coincidence!) Many Delphi developers I know already use Embarcadero tools for managing their larger databases. The products are quite a good fit. And there are even quite a few Borland/CodeGear managers who moved to Embarcadero over the last few months...
I was expecting more of a "financial investment" than an acquisition, but (in reality) this is not far from it. Embarcadero was a public company bought by a financial investor, and CodeGear will become a privately held company (or part of a privately held company) as well. No more excuses for having a detailed roadmap, now.
I like the idea of working closely with the "largest, independent software provider"... but we'll have to see how things evolve. Blog again soon...
12 Comments
Goodbye Borland, Welcome Embarcadero
we'll see what happens, this doesn't generate any interest my first impression... the embarcadero page failed to load =o(Comment by Eber Irigoyen [http://ebersys.blogspot.com] on May 7, 19:59
Goodbye Borland, Welcome Embarcadero
If my math is not so bad, CodeGear has been sold at a very low price. Yahoo is worth for 44 billion but CodeGear only for 0.023 billion. BOrland, what are you thinking about...Comment by stanleyxu [http://stanleyxu2005.blogspot.com] on May 7, 21:19
Goodbye Borland, Welcome Embarcadero
[Wanted to post this to the Borland newsgroups first, but I'm still banned over there.] I'm sceptical. There is nothing wrong with a small shop buying CodeGear. Actually that would have been by dream scenario: A small company that really knows about Delphi (one of the bigger component vendors or partners, for example) buys CodeGear, fires all the "management" and "evangelists" and basically everyone who destroyed Delphi's market share and customer satisfaction during the last years by constantly ignoring what those customers want. A small company that then does a customer survey, and invests some money to form a development team that is actually able to deliver in time what customers have been asking for for years, and is able to catch up on 7 years of falling behind the competition. It doesn't look this way. For now, it could very well be that Embarcadero is just interested into some single Java asset of CodeGear. Or interested in a few of the remaning skilled developers. Most people in the Delphi community won't ever have heard about them. Probably now would be a good time for "would have only listened to me and other partners instead of humiliating us", pointing my finger at the lousy 23M value that has been left. But actually that's not the mood I'm in. I'm sad. I'm sad that a bunch of incompetent CEOs and managers managed to largely destroy what one has been the biggest programming community in the world, the best running commercial component market, with a gigantic base of partners and fans. I won't hold my breath. But the only hope for Delphi I've left is that during the next days and weeks someone from Embarcadero actually tries to get into contact with CodeGears customers and partners, including those partners CodeGear has scared or humiliated during the last years. The best thing Embarcadero could do is NOT to ask those who have been in control during the last years what to do, no evangalists, no product managers. Ask those who might actually be willing to pay money again once they get what they are asking for. SimonComment by Simon Kissel [http://crosskylix.untergrund.net] on May 7, 22:01
Goodbye Borland, Welcome Embarcadero
30 millon dollars??? that's really cheap! pretty weird uh?... i hope the "goodbye borland" dont became a "goodbye delphi"...Comment by Javier Santo Domingo [http://codegear.com] on May 7, 23:46
Goodbye Borland, Welcome Embarcadero
30 million dollars isn't a lot, but might help Borland remain alive for some more time... meanwhile we have once more (or probably for the first time ever) a company focused on developers. Simon, I only partially agree with you, as for me CodeGear is quite different from what Borland was a few years back, and I see a lot of "listening" and "feedback" on their side... getting into the products. I know your experience has been difference. I appreciate you shared your views.Comment by Marco Cantù [http://www.marcocantu.com] on May 8, 00:20
Goodbye Borland, Welcome Embarcadero
Marco, agreed, I see that too. But I also see that each time we've seen this listen->getting into products cycle, it more or less went down a complicated listen->ignore->listen->complete denial->listen->ignore->listen->accept->delay->delay->delay->getting into products route ;) It took some people inside CodeGear extremely long to accept obvious things (like the need for Unicode that they now finally have implemented, and the need for Win64 which is in the delay-phase (not to mention the cross-platform stuff ;)). The turnaround times between customer requirements and actually getting something into a working product are far too long. Probably this is also related to the understaffing of their team, but to me it's most definitely an issue of making customer requests a top priority. And denying customers surveys for up 2 years before finally admitting the customer was right is even worse in this fast-moving business. And no matter what the reasons are: They still are nowhere near having a chance to catch up, but keep falling behind instead. That's why I think that a new owner telling them "you are doing a good job" would be dangerous. While individuals at CodeGear sure might do a good job, as a whole, the job done is incredibly bad when it comes to securing Delphi's market space. Let's face it: Probably the bigger chunk of Delphi users completely refuse to buy their new Delphi versions. It's pretty hard to do a worse job than having your customers tell you "your 8-year old product version was better" ;) IMHO this process would need to be totally changed to something like: a) What do customers want and by when do they need it? b) What is this going to cost us? c) How many developers do we need to get it done in that time? d) What revenue (short and long-time) is this going to bring us? if b>d then get funding, employ developers, produce, deliver, get revenue, be happy. CodeGear in the past has been extremely far from that. And for this to change, the new owner would have to actually find out that the reasons why Delphi isn't a key player anymore is not due to complex market changes, but simply to previous management failing to manage trivial aspects like the above. Sure my opinions are based on my very negative experience how CodeGear has treated critical partners, but still: IMHO all visions, strategies and especially time schedules CodeGear has created should be thrown away, and a new well-planned and funded strategy should be found after intense communication with the customer base.Comment by Simon Kissel [http://crosskylix.untergrund.net] on May 8, 00:47
Goodbye Borland, Welcome Embarcadero
Simon, "The turnaround times between customer requirements and actually getting something into a working product are far too long" -> Well, that's because they "lost" almost 5 years of Delphi Win32 development investing in Linux and .NET versions (although I don't really fully regret either of them) "denying customers surveys for up 2 years" -> yes but now they are listening, more than the average software company, imho "Probably the bigger chunk of Delphi users completely refuse to buy their new Delphi versions. It's pretty hard to do a worse job than having your customers tell you your 8-year old product version was better" -> I disagree on this one, for me the issue is that the newer versions might have too little extra features to justify the upgrade, although after most developers look into them and see how easy is it to move existing applications over, they easily buy a new copy (this happened to me yesterday at a real company 20+ developers , for example) I think your approach is weak in some areas. Not all customers want the same, so you cannot simply listen to all of them. They also want to pay very little, and even simple feature have an implementation + QA + documentation + installation + support cost, that can be easily underestimated. But again, thanks for sharing your POV. Let's hope this deal implies larger and longer terms investments in more cross-platform development tools with Object Pascal behind them (and not only Java and dynamic languages)...Comment by Marco Cantù [http://www.marcocantu.com] on May 8, 01:00
Goodbye Borland, Welcome Embarcadero
Marco, true, it's not that easy as a)-d) ;) Still: As we both know Borland/CodeGear had the tools to find out what their customers wanted in lots of different ways (including ways to find out what those willing to spend more wanted). Commercial component vendor partners, customer surveys, QualityCentral. These sources weren't used enough, and the results were ignored if they didn't fit their vision (whatever that may have been). Let's keep our fingers crossed that Embarcadero will have more success at working on visions and plans together with their customers, and getting the required funding and resources to make Delphi competitive again. Cheers, SimonComment by Simon Kissel [http://crosskylix.untergrund.net] on May 8, 01:24
Goodbye Borland, Welcome Embarcadero
The biggest fear that Delphi developers are likely to have is the lack of knowledge of who Embarcadero are, their vision, how CodeGear products will be treated in relationship to their own, etc. Despite the many failures of Borland in managing the potential of Delphi, CodeGear as an independent company was able to move it forward in such a way that appeared, at least to me, as something they were serious about revitalizing. Now maybe much of this was perception and not reality. But it sure didn't hurt. I agree that the purchase price was way lower than I was expecting. But from what I understand quarterly revenue and profits that CodeGear had been generating, it would seem to me that they can repay this acquisition cost quickly and hopefully do it without losing too many key staff. But hey, its not my company. Its up to them what they do. I just think all of us customers would like to get some idea of what the future may hold, since we are all betting on futures in the computer industry. MylesComment by Myles [http://www.techsolusa.com] on May 8, 01:52
Goodbye Borland, Welcome Embarcadero
Venal Sods, nothing to say or deal with anymoreComment by PapaQ on May 8, 16:10
Goodbye Borland, Welcome Embarcadero
Sayonara, my lovely Delphi, finally I fear. I had just upgraded and got Marco's book, so sad. I'm thinking back at Nantucket's Clipper I did so well with, until Computer Associates bought and killed it. I'm thinking back at Zortech's C++, which Borland did some great things with, only to be out- sold and C++ finally ruined by Microsoft. Hopefully there's that connection between Delphi and C# still, that's where I'll have to go. Can't beat the 800-lb gorillas. Programming used to be so fun!Comment by Don Ridgway [http://www.customusa.com] on May 8, 22:20
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Goodbye Borland, Welcome Embarcadero
Comment by ctrev on May 7, 17:37