Paul Krill
Editor at Large

Upheaval at Borland

news
Jul 13, 20052 mins

Borland Software last week quietly acknowledged the departure of its CEO, Dale Fuller. The announcement was made during the generally quiet week of July 4, which perhaps gave Borland some assistance in not drawing too much attention to itself over this.

While trying to serve both the .Net and Java markets, Borland nonetheless has been caught in the Eclipse juggernaut, which is resulting in a commoditization of the Java IDE market. Borland’s JBuilder has been a player in this space.

Fuller’s departure was made in conjunction with the revelation that the company was not meeting financial expectations. I always found Fuller to be an upbeat individual optimistic about Borland’s chances. His exit was a bit of a surprise to me, although he remains on the company’s board of directors.

Borland offers developers an alternative to Microsoft for developing Windows applications and an alternative to Sun Microsystems, BEA Systems and IBM for developing on Java. The company’s neutrality is further enhanced by its not being a player in the hardware market, like Sun and IBM.

It will be interesting to observe whether Borland can grow its market share in both .Net and Java, as well to watch its progress in the emerging application lifecycle management market.

The company in recent years gone from being named Borland, then Inprise and back to Borland. Like the earthquake country of northern California, where the company is based, Borland remains subject to quaking of its own.

Paul Krill

Paul Krill is editor at large at InfoWorld. Paul has been covering computer technology as a news and feature reporter for more than 35 years, including 30 years at InfoWorld. He has specialized in coverage of software development tools and technologies since the 1990s, and he continues to lead InfoWorld’s news coverage of software development platforms including Java and .NET and programming languages including JavaScript, TypeScript, PHP, Python, Ruby, Rust, and Go. Long trusted as a reporter who prioritizes accuracy, integrity, and the best interests of readers, Paul is sought out by technology companies and industry organizations who want to reach InfoWorld’s audience of software developers and other information technology professionals. Paul has won a “Best Technology News Coverage” award from IDG.

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