Borland readies enterprise suites

Borland, based here, plans to release Borland Enterprise Studio for .Net by the end of the second quarter, with Borland Enterprise Studio for C++ to follow in the third quarter, said Frank Slootman, Borland's senior vice president and general manager of software products. Borland Enterprise Studio for Java is already available.

With its extended product set, Borland now tackles every aspect of constructing an application from the ground up, Slootman said. The post-acquisition Borland now targets six areas: application development, testing, deployment, definition, design and change management.

The new enterprise suites are the first products from Borland to bring all six functionalities together for developers, said Blake Stone, Borland's chief scientist. "The shift is a combination of years of planning," he said.

Borland restructured after the January acquisitions, forming two new business units,one called Together and one called Developer Services,to handle the new products and facilitate their integration with existing products.

Todd Wille, president and CEO of Unify, a Sacramento, California-based software developer and solution provider, called Borland's turnaround "inspirational," considering industry observers were predicting the once-struggling company's demise just three years ago.

"Borland is a great example of what can happen when you know your customers and listen to them and then focus, purely and simply, on execution," Wille said.

Stone also quelled rumors that surfaced last year, in light of IBM's Rational acquisition, that Microsoft had plans to buy Borland. "Our value is in our independence," he said.

Five years ago, 80 percent of Borland's products were used on the Windows platform, Slootman said. Today, 65 percent is in Java development products, which demonstrates a commitment to evolving with market needs, he said.