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Microsoft in spotlight over Borland swoop | |
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| Time: 11:07 EST/16:07 GMT | News Source: The Register | Posted By: Byron Hinson | ||
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A surprise thanks goes to Bill for this one: The acquisition spotlight fell on Microsoft Corp yesterday, as speculation swept Wall St that the company was moving against Borland Software Corp as well as Rational Software Corp to revive its application design and modeling offerings, writes Gavin Clarke. Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft was reported to be preparing the acquisition of its number-one competitor in the Windows developer space, Borland. Boland itself recently bought design and modeling specialist TogetherSoft SA. | ||
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| #1 By 7390 (198.246.16.251) at 12/13/2002 11:18:35 AM |
| Interesting but I don't see the value that Borland would add to MS. Bordland is actually trying to create a better IDE than Visual Studio. Other than Power Builder.net which no one will I anyway I don't get the value of Bordland. I just hope that this isn't a knee jerk reaction to possible losing Ration to IBM. |
| #2 By 20 (24.243.41.64) at 12/13/2002 12:53:29 PM |
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Borland has always had some fairly cool ideas, but could just never pull them off. TurboC and Delphi were about their only claims to fame.
With sufficient funding and proper leadership, I think they could produce some pretty cool stuff. I hope MS buys them, puts in some smart fiscal management, but leaves the creative stuff alone -- a "Skunkworks" for MS, perhaps. MS needs some companies that it keeps at arms length and lets them do their own thing kinda like AOL and Netscape. It may work, it may not. |
| #3 By 20 (24.243.41.64) at 12/13/2002 1:05:25 PM |
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Borland is hardly competition to anyone anymore. They are a market follower now. They are making Delphi.NET. Delphi was their only real claim to fame at this point and they're abandonning it already.
The real competition is Development on other platforms (Linux), Java, and a few other C++ compiler vendors. |
| #4 By 20 (24.243.41.64) at 12/13/2002 1:07:27 PM |
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#2, I just now read your comment. Very good point.
I thought the timing of the buyout was suspicious. MS has considered buying Borland off and on for several years. I wondered what made them decide to now all of a sudden. |
| #5 By 1124 (165.170.128.68) at 12/13/2002 1:13:19 PM |
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Microsoft already have Borlands best programmers, so might as well get the rest.
Anyone know how real this is?(after all, this is the register) |
| #6 By 3339 (65.198.47.10) at 12/13/2002 1:33:37 PM |
| One would have to consider the shareholders as well... MS would certainly have to buy them at a premium, but the shareholders are fully aware that 50% of Borland's revenue comes from Java/non-MS technology... Killing off that large a portion of revenue isn't desirable for shareholders in the long run when this would take a while to take effect. I would imagine that Borland is relatively happy with its position today--Fuller has been doing quite a job over the last couple of years as CEO--I would imagine the Board could craft various techniques or poison pills to prevent or to make it undesirable for MS to make the purchase. (Note that it's also rumored--I say "rumored" because this is all what analysts think should or could happen--that the IBM, Rational contract includes a provision to release and license source code to IBM even if another company outbids them. If that's true, that's quite the strategy, and that ends any reason for MS to counter bid.) |
| #7 By 135 (209.180.28.6) at 12/13/2002 2:52:50 PM |
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Starteam also has CaliberRM for Requirements management... Apparently it's a better product than the one Rational sells.
Also Starbase isn't a CVS implementation. Or at least I hope not as CVS is just as bad as VSS. jerky boy writes in with his typical anti-MS bias - "One would have to consider the shareholders as well... MS would certainly have to buy them at a premium, but the shareholders are fully aware that 50% of Borland's revenue comes from Java/non-MS technology... Killing off that large a portion of revenue isn't desirable for shareholders in the long run when this would take a while to take effect." Why would shareholders care? They'd get a big chunk of MSFT. As far as revenue generation, the Microsoft brand-name attached to the products would make them easier to sell and generate more revenue than they have now. No it's the customers that should be worried. When Microsoft bought SourceSafe they dropped their OS/2 and Unix versions, leaving existing customers of those lines in the lurch. "that the IBM, Rational contract includes a provision to release and license source code to IBM even if another company outbids them. If that's true, that's quite the strategy, and that ends any reason for MS to counter bid.) " Are you sure you aren't RE Ballard? Just wondering, cause that is exactly the kind of BS he makes up all the time. This post was edited by sodablue on Friday, December 13, 2002 at 14:55. |
| #8 By 3339 (65.198.47.10) at 12/13/2002 4:49:36 PM |
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"jerky boy writes in with his typical anti-MS bias" how is discussing the difficulties of an acquisition in anyway anti-MS, soda? Did I say: MS can't do this, shouldn't do this, will kill good products, etc?
"Are you sure you aren't RE Ballard? Just wondering, cause that is exactly the kind of BS he makes up all the time." I'm just reading the words before me, dink. Didn't I say this whole supposition is rumor? Jeez, you are awfully touchy and easy to piss off, soda. |
| #9 By 135 (209.180.28.6) at 12/13/2002 5:44:48 PM |
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TheCodeFoundry - "I meant to say that Starbase is a SCM (software configuration management)"
That's what I thought. :) "Unfortunately, there are many many flaws in VSS " The major flaws we've encountered with VSS is simply what it's capable of due to the design constraints. It doesn't work well to manage larger code repositories with lot's of developers. This is largely the fault of it's lousy branch/merge capabilities, but also some other features. It also has some stability issues because it's pretty much just a client side solution... that is all the management logic is handled by the clients, and they can easily corrupt data. RCS operated in a similar fashion. CVS is really just a wrapper around RCS to solve that issue of clients corrupting the datastore. You now access the CVS server process, which takes care of the RCS stuff in the background. But again from what I've seen CVS has issues with branching, merging, and so forth... the Linux community uses it a lot but doesn't see these issues because patches are generally filtered back through half a dozen people who actually apply them. They also tend to have fairly easy release schedules, and do grunt work to merge changes in because they're unconcerned with timelines or efficiency since the work is free. "I know how well ClearCase works (or doesn't), but haven't any experience with StarBase. Hell, anything is better than VSS for larger teams or projects or for projects requiring branching." We used to use PVCS here, and that bit. It was no better than VSS. Clearcase is supposed to be full featured, but it essentially requires a full time admin. I've not used Starbase myself, but it's generally regarded by others as the best SCM on the market in terms of features and usability. Perforce is regarded as one of the best in terms of cross-platform support, speed and manageability. It'll be interesting to see. |
| #10 By 135 (209.180.28.6) at 12/13/2002 5:46:48 PM |
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jerky boy - heh.
""jerky boy writes in with his typical anti-MS bias" how is discussing the difficulties of an acquisition in anyway anti-MS, soda? Did I say: MS can't do this, shouldn't do this, will kill good products, etc? " You made some BS statement about stock holders... Once the company is bought, there are no individual stockholders in Borland... they own MSFT stock now. Thus these concerns are funny... ""Are you sure you aren't RE Ballard? Just wondering, cause that is exactly the kind of BS he makes up all the time." I'm just reading the words before me, dink. Didn't I say this whole supposition is rumor? " Perhaps you could cite a source for this claim of yours. If you can't, that will confirm to me you are RE Ballard. |
| #11 By 931 (66.180.122.28) at 12/13/2002 6:36:14 PM |
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blue,
interesting you mention that.. my pvcs prof. eval cd arrived today.. It's only been a day but seem a hell of alot better the VSS.. I've not tried the other tools mentioned (starbase and clearcase) but I just added them to me software to eval list.. |
| #12 By 13030 (12.238.187.82) at 12/13/2002 11:57:52 PM |
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Perhaps Microsoft's interest in Borland is not just merely a reaction IBM's Rational acquisition. MS has indicated, or at least avoided denying, an interest in Linux lately. Borland's top revenue generator is their JBuilder Java tool. Recently, Borland has been positioning itself as platform agnostic. The Kylix and upcoming C++ Builder for Linux products combined with Java tool dominance would give MS a strong initial position for non-Windows development tools and opportunities. Historically, MS buys its technology to catch up (and eventually surpass) its competition. The acquisition of Borland would achieve that same purpose, if, in fact, MS is going to diversify from its Windows-centric view of the world.
I find JBuilder to be the best Java development tool. I still use MS tools for the majority of my development, but I have also owned every version of Delphi and C+ Builder and find them to be viable alternatives to MS's Visual Studio line. The .Net platform is competitive, but only in a corporate environment where the deployment systems are homogenous. Borland's tools, however, allow for applications that can be easily developed and deployed to any Windows system. Borland has also maintained excellent upgrade compatibility with its Delphi (and C++ Builder) tools--something that MS showed very little understanding with Visual Basic and VB .NET. Even the preview Delphi .NET tool allows for an easier code upgrade path than VB to VB .NET. Contrary to some of the other posts, Borland does offer tremendous value to MS (as MS's hiring of key Borland employees and licensing of Borland technologies demonstrates.) Now, if I could only trust that MS is doing what is best for developers, and the industry, instead of trying to stomp the alternatives out of existence... |
| #13 By 20 (24.243.41.64) at 12/14/2002 1:57:32 AM |
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IIRC, Anders Hejlsberg, chief language architect of C# at MS, was a former Borland employee that worked on and even designed Delphi, IIRC.
Also, even if TogetherSoft J is written in Java for Java, it's better for MS to have SOME IP that they can convert rather than NO IP with which to throw up against the IBM / Rational duo. -d |
| #14 By 61 (65.32.170.1) at 12/14/2002 11:46:18 AM |
| #6 The difference is when Microsoft tried to buy Intuit, Microsoft didn't have their Money software out yet and were just looking to get into that market. |
| #15 By 3653 (65.190.70.73) at 12/14/2002 1:23:49 PM |
| one has to wonder if MS is really reacting to IBM... or if the media is just writing the story with no research. All too often, the first announcement is the actual reaction. In a month or so, this story is likely to change dramatically. Who knows... perhaps MS offered to buy Rational first and IBM upped the bid. |
| #16 By 931 (67.35.48.225) at 12/15/2002 12:07:59 PM |
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That's not quite true #21 MSMoney was too out at the time they were trying to buy Intuit.. it's just that msmoney was a piece of crap at that time, and had about 5% market share. What they were trying to do was buy into the leading spot in the market. That was one of few killed deals that I actually agreed with the governments case. Course that's probably cause I had plenty of buddies working at Peachtree at the time.. lol.
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