Interview: David I talks Delphi

 

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Posted on 12 Jun 2003 at 15:47

David I: When we talk to our customers worldwide, a vast majority say they will have Java J2EE, and Windows .Net somewhere in their infrastructure, whether it's in different departments or divisions, but these two going to be there. And are customers are asking us for solutions to both, and to integrate across both. For example our Janeva software - that's all about integrating across those two platforms for enterprise computing.

But how big is it going to be?

David I: Anything that Microsoft is involved in is big! We have been successful at Borland by supporting Microsoft since Dos 1. Windows is already huge and .Net is going to be really big.

We are already covered for C#, which we think is going to be significant - people are exploring the language. Being early on a platform, or being early on a language, is a good thing for the adoption curve. Our customers are on the same curve.

How is the relationship with Microsoft. On the one hand you are co-operating, but on another hand you are competing?

David I: If you think about it, Microsoft sometimes competes with itself. They have products, for example for the Macintosh, which competes with Windows. There are different parts of Microsoft, it is a large company.

The way we put it is like this, we have a 'good strategic alliances' with the Microsoft Windows division, we don't really to do anything with the Games division, Office is a sort of huge component library for us - we populate palettes full of components by pulling in the COM interfaces and making Delphi interfaces, automatically. We have great cooperation at all levels, the operating system, .Net framework, and so on. And, also, we have a 'healthy dose of competition' with their developer tools division!

Speaking of Apple prompts a mischievous question: some conspiracy theorists believe the presence of Apple (in which Microsoft has invested in the past) is necessary for Microsoft to prove there is competition in the market place. Does Microsoft need Borland to exist, too?

David I: Gee. I don't think about it. Such a conspiracy theory wouldn't be worth the ink of print.

I believe in focussing on what we are trying to do, to solve real problems to give customers real business benefits by delivering functionality that can help them be productive and successful. Conspiracy theories don't help developers, don't help customers - I don't want to go down that path.

But to turn it into a more serious question, are you happy that the market place is sufficiently level that the rewards for responding to customer needs will lead to Borland's prosperity. The market is sufficiently benign, as it were?

David I: I believe that if we do a good job in providing products and services that solve real business problems for customers, and that we do it with high quality, with good partnerships, then Borland will be around for a long, long time. Because those kind of things, over time, are celebrated. Just as we are celebrating 20 years.

I can't foresee a future where Borland is not part of the world of development. People may have tried in the past to get rid of Borland or tried to make Borland irrelevant. But ultimately the real value, the real truth, is that excellence does endure. When you consider the range of things we have brought to the development world, Borland has done good things and continues to do good things.

But hey, I suppose if someone wanted to keep us around 'for fun' or for 'healthy competition', fine, give us a couple of billion dollars and we'll sit around and wear Borland polo shirts and put the money in the bank, but we'll still innovate, no matter what somebody did. We'll still drive, because of the people inside the company. And our customers are very demanding. Very demanding. With other competitors of ours they might just say 'well, we get whatever they give us, because that's the way they work'. In our case, they are very demanding - we hear from them all the time, and we wouldn't have it any other way. That's the difference. There's just a difference. The difference between Borland and other companies. And that's to be celebrated.