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The new CEO of Borland Software is trying to mount a comeback, one of many the company has had to stage over years of ups and downs.
Arnold took over the Scotts Valley, Calif.-based company in July from Dale Fuller, who left after eight years and the announcement of poor second-quarter performance. Arnold faces the challenge of generating revenue growth from Borland's application development suite as well as responding to calls for a company breakup from noisy shareholder Robert Coates.
CNET News.com spoke to Arnold recently about the latest twists on Borland's strategy and the competitive environment.
Q: People talk about how open source "commoditizes" certain product categories. And you've said your JBuilder Java IDE (integrated development environment) has seen a marked drop-off in sales. What's your response to Eclipse (the open-source IDE framework)?
Arnold: We're embracing and building on top of it. One of the things we're seeing is that the traditional product category called the IDE is disappearing. The notion of a developer working separately from a team is much less compelling than it used to be. The IDE as a part of a broader developer role in our ALM (application lifecycle management) suite is still a very compelling opportunity for us as we think about adding on top of things that are available in Eclipse.
Does growing interest in simpler tools, often available cheaply, pose a problem for your ALM strategy where you're selling a suite of tools suited for a more structured development process?
Arnold: The real problem is not getting cheap and cheerful functionality for one particular role on the team. It's really making the team work together as a team and deliver a great outcome. Part of the core value-add we aspire to is making open source and Borland-provided pieces work well together so the team (has) a good output.
As the new CEO, how do you want to modify the current Borland strategy?
Arnold: A lot of people have tried to build the next new whizbang technology. We're taking a fresher approach of marrying improvements in the software development process with technology--leveraging that and really looking at the system much more holistically, as you would with any other part of your business.
Borland has the pieces as well as anyone else and the capabilities at least as well as anyone else. And what we have to do is execute against that--and that's where we've had problems...in the transition.
You already have the suite of ALM tools that addresses everything from getting requirements, modeling, coding and testing. But what you seem to be talking about is more high-touch consulting. Is that where you want to go?
Arnold: The ALM tools are absolutely the core of it. What we're adding to that--which was born of the acquisition of TeraQuest Metrics earlier this year--is a way to engage with customers in a much more holistic fashion. In the past, we were coming across as pushing technology on them.
We now have a whole different level of discussion with these folks. It's still about selling the software from a financial perspective but approaching the problem more from a holistic and business-oriented way than we have in the past.
Do you have the consulting skills to advise customers on good development processes?
Arnold: Some of it is more consulting. A lot of it is just a different way of engaging customers at the front end of the sales cycle. We have a larger number of SEI (Software Engineering Institute) assessors--software process doctors, if you will--than any organization.
Two people in particular who came from TeraQuest--Bill Curtis and Charlie Weber--they are the guys that wrote the book on CMMI (Capability Maturity Model Integration) process. So we can give a diagnostic on a company's software development processes. The dirty little secret here is that everyone knows that (the average company is) pretty bad at software (development).
Sounds like what IBM might say they could deliver with their consultants.
Arnold: We've resigned ourselves to the fact that we're competing with IBM directly. Whenever we go into a situation that's an IBM Global Services account with a ton of WebSphere and other IBM infrastructure and they're a Rational tools shop, we shake the dust off our shoes and move on to the next customer. While they are big, they don't have everyone. The second thing is, everyone who doesn't like IBM is our friend. Think about all the global systems integrators--they have a vested interest in seeing us be successful because they don't want IBM to rule the world.
What about Microsoft? Are they an ally or competitor in this strategy?
Arnold: They are primarily an ally but also a competitor in one sense. Part of what neither Microsoft nor IBM can or will do is that we go across both .Net and Java. We can span across those domains. And most customers do not have just Java or just .Net. Increasingly we're seeing data and hearing customers saying at least 30 percent of projects involve Java and .Net in the same project. Microsoft can't
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It would be intersting to model a software culture based in part by Ivan Illach work Tools for Conviviality.
This interview reminds me of one of the news.com.com perspective pieces this summer - "Misplaced Software Priorities", which talked about focus and determination in open source as a transformative process for clear execution - something Borland's lacked.
There are a lot of development languages, and as products tie different platforms together someone needs to be there to make that job easier.
I could see a multi-platform IDE for a large list of development languages with integrated support for a CVS repository.
It looks Borland does not understand at all that many Delphi developers don't need to move and don't want to move to .NET as long as Windows allows for native code to run. If I needed a WM or a GC I wuold been using VB6 or Java already.
And whenever I move to .NET - if forced - I will be using MS tools, of course. Why should I use someone's else just to do the same thing? That's why MS likes Borland so much... move everybody to .NET and they will rule...