Building a better Borland
Published: 27 Sep 2005 15:05 BST
What's it like to have open source products cut the legs from beneath one area of business while facing powerhouses IBM and Microsoft in another? Ask Scott Arnold.
The new chief executive 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, California-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.
ZDNet UK sister site 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 "commoditises" certain product categories. And you've said your JBuilder Java IDE has seen a marked drop-off in sales. What's your response to (open source IDE framework) Eclipse?
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?
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 chief executive, how do you want to modify the current Borland strategy?
A lot of people have tried to...
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