My friends, what a day!
It is my great pleasure to announce Embarcadero’s definitive agreement to acquire the CodeGear Developer Tools Division from Borland Software, effective today, May 7th 2008! We are ecstatic for this relationship and what we have formed coming out of this due diligence is the largest independent tools provider for designing, developing managing and optimizing applications and databases.
Independently, we are two great niche business serving loyal customer bases in our areas of mastery.
Together, we are a one stop shop and multi-million user community serving the software or database professional offering expertise and support for more platforms, languages, operating systems and development approaches than any other vendor on planet Earth.
It’s all there for you from one vendor now.
OK, so where to begin? Let’s start with some of the background.
In 2001, Embarcadero had its first experiences with Borland. At the time, Embarcadero was intrigued with the escalating developer tools space and providing productivity ‘features’ for this growing community. We were doing the same for database tooling at the time (we still are…) but we saw t
he opportunity to leverage some of our strengths in modeling to create something we called an “Integrated Modeling Development Environment” or IMDE for short. This provided us a means to reach out to the development community with a compelling solution while still sticking to our core business: databases. This initiative equated to us selling bits of our modeling product line (UML modeling in this case) to ‘plug in’ to various IDEs which ranged from Borland’s JBuilder, to Sun NetBeans (Sun One Studio at the time) and Eclipse in and around version 2.x. I think the independent IDE manufacturers saw the light and now UML is nearly a standard part of the integrated IDE experience. But our relationship and experience with Borland and the product teams which would later become CodeGear were deep and taught us a lot about the development tools market but more prolifically their deep capabilities and our similarities in culture and approach to the SDLC to delivering products to market.
By February of 2006, Borland had made some strategic shifts in its corporate strategy and carved out the developer tools unit as a wholly owned subsidiary known as ‘CodeGear.’ The parent made its intent known that it was divesting from being in the pure-play tools business to focus on its new strategy but a transaction was never completed vis-à-vis the release of CodeGear. The development and management team of this new CodeGear group in Scotts Valley CA and around the world was still focused on creating the best developer tools available on the market, ranging from Delphi, JBuilder, Interbase and more. The team had taken developer productivity to a whole new level winning awards such as the best IDE award in 2008 from InfoWorld and consistently ticking out releases of their product line year after year. CodeGear continued to push into new and uncharted areas like application frameworks, Web 2 development ASP.Net, Delphi for PHP, Ruby on Rails and more all the while growing its core business of loyal Delphi and IDE customers.
Alright Greg, nice walk down memory lane. So, on the announcement.
In my 12 years at Embarcadero, I have not felt or seen the excitement at these levels since we were an obscure start up banging out product in a way-to-small space on Montgomery Street in San Francisco. This announcement is a game changer for both Embarcadero and CodeGear…as well as the market itself. In its most abstract sense, Embarcadero and CodeGear together as a single business are like…
1 + 1 = 3
Why? Well, to be frank, the mere exposure of Embarcadero’s database productivity tooling to CodeGear’s developer community and vice versa will be an immediate exposure of technologies across these disciplines increasing productivity on both sides of the ‘fence’. Better yet, all available to them now from one trusted vendor. So, cross-pollinating is good for business and good for the customer to have these choices.
But things are changing. The role of the software developer her/himself is changing. In a staggering increase in time expenditure, software developers are spending a radically increased
proportion of their time on database technologies. Whether it’s simply tying an application or middle ware infrastructure to a relational database or more advanced issues like mastering Ruby on Rails which at its heart is database driven application construction, the software developer needs help on the heady subject matter of relational database technologies because they are IN it now. The eWeek article I hastily snapped a pic demonstrates data points on the changing workload of the developer and we are corroborating from our user bases as well. The software developer is expanding and is required to know more…especially on ‘foreign’ database technologies and languages…and be proficient at an end-to-end perspective of the application they develop against.
So, I view the changing landscape mentioned above as an opportunity. An opportunity for us to create a a business where …
1+1 = 10!
How the multiple? It’s about who we are now and what we have inside our domain which will provide us the opportunity to execute on new and unique tooling that we are poised to offer with our talented staff. The bench strength we now have in our newly combined R & D, marketing and sales teams is unmatched and provides us a totally unique opportunity to integrate and create products we could never have done without each other. Whole new products tooled for this new breed of software architect/developer/manager to increase expertise and productivity from GUI forms design through to the database specific code optimized to retrieve, insert, update or delete the user’s data. Products that can be integrated quickly to touch more infrastructure than ever before.
Think end to end development and code optimization.
Think Oracle, Java, Web 2, Ruby on Rails, Sybase, PHP, Frameworks and more.
Think holistic and progressive model-driven development solutions.
Think deeper developer productivity in their chosen IDE.
Think access to the best experts in the biz.
Think community where you can integrate your thoughts with millions of others.
So, that is my personal perspective on this exciting news. We are extremely happy and excited and get busy on business and product integrations. Mostly, we are happy for you, our customers, for what we will be able to provide you in terms of product, expertise and community. Stay tuned for more announcements and as always feel free to reach out to us along the way for more details.
Onward.
Thanks for reading.
Greg
32 comments:
This is massive news, does this mean that future versions of tools such as Delphi will be more ECO/Modelling driven?
I'd say massive is appropriate! We have worked hard on this merging of minds and are incredibly excited for the opportunity. As it relates to model-driven approaches, the sky is the limit. We certainly independently have lots of history in leveraging modeling to boost developer productivity (either app or DB folks) so stay tuned for news as we move down the road. It's not realistic to thing *all* products will have a model driven approach, but certainly where it makes sense, is compelling and ensures productivity, we'd be keep to drive in that way.
Thanks for reading!
Greg
I guess it is time to dig out my Java books again...
Great news, Greg.
Karen
Ah, Ms. Lopez! That is where you are mistaken! Sure, feel free to get ramped up again on Java...but like you know EMbarcadero from its database tools, the intent here is to continue our trend of 'platform independence.' You want to code Java or Ruby on Rails or C++ or Delphi....or how about DB2, Oracle or MySQL? Oh, you wnat to deploy on Linux, Unix or Windows? All, no problem. We're assembling a portfolio of productivity toling for 'software professionals' who need to eek out every amount of productivity they can w.r.t. their jobs. We want to be that provider. Download a copy of 3rd Rail and get busy!!
What does this mean to non-database developers?
While I've used Delphi for projects involving Sybase ASE/ASA, MS-SQL, Firebird, and other sql engines, I ALSO have a long list of custom programs for system programming, device control, and various other 'database-free' applications.
Will Delphi remain available as a general-purpose developer tool?
Cheers,
EdB
Keep support for full application development, not just database front ends. The need for a GUI to manipulate over 4GB of data and use C++ Builder is something
we would like to have going forward. With 64bit and Unicode fully working and supported, 3rd party developers can componentize things you never thought to add.
Thank you.
Congratulations on the aquisition!
Delphi is, and always has been, about more than just people in cubicles pumping out database apps. Delphi has long been a favorite choice among individual developers and ISVs, many of whom are not producing database-centric apps. It is truly the best all-around development system for Windows, great for both in-house database apps and commercial products alike.
Borland has neglected the individual developer and ISV for a number of years now, instead choosing to chase after the big corporate bucks via its ALM products. And you can see what happened to Delphi's user base because of it.
I sincerely hope you understand that you are aquiring more than just a database modeling app and IDE. You are aquiring a first class compiler and development system in which many thousands of developers have invested many years of effort and millions of lines of code. Many businesses rely on Delphi as the tool their products - both database and non-database - are developed with.
I would really love to see a statement from Embarcadero clearly stating that it is committed to furthering Delphi as a general development tool, and that its plans are not just to convert Delphi into some sort of database development tool of interest only to a niche of 'corporate' customers.
Dear Greg,
first of all congrats to your purchase. As a long-time Delphi-User (and ex-Borland/CodeGear) partner, I'm obviously curious and afraid about what the future will bring for Delphi.
As you probably know, Delphi once had a very good position in the market place. During the recent years this has been ruined due to several reasons, the most important ones being:
- Understaffing of R&D, with key Delphi developers leaving Borland because they couldn't stand the bad management.
- Product managers and 'evangelists' completely ignoring customer feedback and product surveys (it took years for the community to make them understand Unicode and native Win64 support are a must, and that they are unable to compete with MS in the .NET managed code space. They still haven't gotten that in several areas of the world, people would be dying to buy a version of Delphi that is able to produce native Linux and Mac applications)
- Humiliation of partners and long-time followers (there are LOTS of these), damaging the community that once kept Delphi strong.
- Product roadmaps you couldn't trust on. Products suddenly got EOLed, leaving customers behind. Features most requested by customers usually was put at the very far end of roadmaps, and again and again delayed for years (native cross-platform compilation, Win64, Unicode).
- Extremely bad product quality and rushed releases due to quarterly revenue goals for 6 years.
I think it's important for you to find out that Delphi actually still has the potential to be a business far more worth that what you've paid for CodeGear. However, drastic changes are required for it to have a chance again.
I ask you to talk to the community as soon as possible, also inviting back in partners CodeGear refused to keep talking to - there are lots of disgruntled ex-partners and community members that could help out in areas Delphi has fallen behind. You should most definitely hold a customer survey, too. Surveys done by Borland/CodeGear in the past have been non-public, some extremely biased to make people approve wrong visions and the likes. Borland and CodeGear have treated customers in a "we know better what you need than you" kind of way. That didn't quite work out.
The community is the biggest value there still is in Delphi. Please make use of this value as much as possible.
Thank you,
Simon Kissel
Hello Greg. I'm a Delphi guy who I'm sorry to say hasn't heard of your company before. I've been to your website and had a look at your products and your company history but one question remains.
What is the story behind your company name?
Lachlan
EdB --
Delphi is going to remain the powerful tool that it is today. It's just going to be an even better tool than it already is for developing database-based applications.
It's all good, Ed.
Nick Hodges
Delphi Product Manager
Such GREAT questions, folks! Let me net it out this way....and likely best to respond in a forthcoming post more completely:
First, when we looked at the proposition to acquire CodeGear, we saw unbelievable parallels in our businesses. Specifically we saw a business like ours that sells blatant, raw productivity (through tooling) to developers. So that is parallel no. 1. Embarcadero has built its own franchise on doing exactly this for more prototypical ‘database’ people (DBA’s, SQL developers, data architects)…e.g. tooling to bolster productivity in an age of increasing complexity.
Second, moving deeper in the due diligence, we saw another obvious parallel. That being ‘platform independence.’ What we saw here is tooling that can help code against….well, you name it! Java, C++, Delphi, RoR, PHO, ASP….etc. Now look at Embarcadero: independence from Oracle, DB2, SQL Server, Sybase, MySQL, etc etc. Moreover, independence from any given ‘major’ stack per se….giving you choice through true best of breed/most productivity/most similarity to code against anything your changing world will encounter.
Third, we saw similar paradigm approaches to the problems we want to solve. In other words, we both make tooling to help Design, Develop, Optimize and finally Manage the development of an application. So again, we are right there in our critical thinking about the problem space and how to approach it.
Lastly, we looked at parallels in our own businesses vis-à-vis our customer base(s). We saw that both had STRONG foundations of loyal…dare I say rabid…end users of products like DBArtisan or Delphi. And both are STILL growing! And both do an amazing evangelical job of selling their virtues to new customers as well. The community must be grown and you will all play a role in doing so.
So with the above said, and to what I read as the main ‘thread’ through these comments above, we are bringing on CodeGear to be re-invested within pure and simple. We’re here to build a business that serves and grows these traditional bases while moving into exciting new emerging areas. To prove this point somewhat, while Embarcadero will be the go forward name of the company, we are so enchanted with the history and ‘cleanliness’ of the CodeGear portfolio that Embarcadero’s ‘traditional’ portfolio will likely be rolled into a parallel branded business unit to be known as DatabaseGear.tools provider! One that needs to continue pushing this raw productivity out to you the Delphi, Oracle, RoR, SQL Server, Java, Sybase, PHP, MySQL professional. Software is the database and software is the business logic and software is the user experience. It’s software and someone has to own the ability to offer you productivity to build it. We’ve chosen to be this vendor.
Thanks always for reading,
Greg
Oh, Lachlan! Ah, “Embarcadero”. Clearly you’ve never been to San Francisco my friend! If I said “Brooklyn Software” you’d think NYC, right? The Embarcadero is a famous promenade on the Bay front here in the city….and where we are headquartered. The word is nearly synonymous with San Francisco and thus we took that name on to identify with this City we love (OK so I live in Boulder now….but I lived here for a decade in the early days of Embarcadero building out this company!) Download a product and giver ‘er a try!
Hey Greg,
I look forward to meeting with you as well and helping hammer out some product synergies. I, too, am excited about this opportunity for our newly combined venture!
Allen Bauer,
CodeGear Chief Scientist
http://blogs.codegear.com/abauer
Congratulations on purchasing on what has to be one of the secret jewels of the software world. I was wondering when someone would finally notice it.
The secret to the success of your new acquisition is to get back to the very core of what made the original Borland a success: Inexpensive development tools that worked and produced good quality executables. That's is all we ask.
The last 6-7 years have seen the increasing cost of Borland/Codegear products coupled with a drop in quality almost completely wipe out its marketshare of developer tools. Get back to the original philosophy of producing quality and quit focusing on revenue. In doing so, revenue will take care of itself.
Oh, also spend a little money on Marketing. I can't tell you the number of times I've had to explain to people that Delphi hasn't been abandoned. Worse yet is trying to explain to some mid-level manager who read an article in an in-flight magazine espousing the benefits of C# and Java, why Delphi is a better development environment than either of them.
You're developers. Make quality tools for developers, sell them at a reasonable cost (NOT $900.00+) and developers will beat a path to your door.
Finally, make it worthwhile for Professors at Universities and Instructors in High Schools to teach using your products. Give every computer science professor and ever programming instructor a free copy of Delphi Pro, JBuilder, etc.
Also, bring back the old No-Nonsence license...
Good Luck,
Greg,
Looking forward to great things from the mass of excellent people that have joined today - to supply me with a product.
"tooling to help Design, Develop, Optimize and finally Manage the development of an application"
Uhm...
Design... what, like UML modeling? Okay, I suppose, if you must.
Develop... good. Great. That's what tools like Delphi are for. Go for it with both barrels.
Optimize... wait, what? Are you going to release profiling tools or something?
Manage...
Eeeewwwwww.
That word sets off major alarm bells, because "Manage" does *not* sound like developer tools. It sounds more like the Software Delivery Optimization crap that Borland started spouting a few years ago. Back around the time that they forgot (again) that they were a developer-tools company... back when they decided they'd rather sell touchy-feely tools to managers, instead of selling tools that people could use to get actual work done... back not too long before they announced that they no longer gave a damn about their core products, and that Borland, founded as a developer-tools company, was going to sell off their whole developer-tools division.
You may not have meant anything quite as awful as SDO when you said "Manage", but that's the image that came inexorably to mind.
So... could you please expand on that "Design, Develop, Optimize, Manage" mantra, and explain what you mean by it, and whether it's actually good news for developers?
Delphi is a great tool to develop DB applications, because it is not a tool to develop db application only.
Change it into a sort of PowerBuilder and you'll kill it, most of its user will go away looking for another tool powerful enough to fit their needs.
Most of us use DBs for their data storage, but we don't code DB front-ends only. We don't CRUD only.
I hope that the growth forecasts announced in the acquisition press release will realize for the benefit of employees of these two companies, but the expansion of diffusion of free open source and commercial competing products will make it very difficult to achieve them.
The price paid by Embarcadero is therefore around 50% of yearly revenues. This could be compare for instance with the price paid last year by IBM to acquire Telelogic, which was around 300% of 2007 revenues. This low price MEANS something...
Thanks for the explanation on the name Greg. I'm actually in Australia and the Spanish influences aren't as strong here as they are in the USA. It will take us Aussies a while to get use to the name, right now it just feels a bit... clumsy I guess.
I'll take a look at your products though and was thinking I might do a quick intro to them at our next Delphi user group meeting.
Hooray for CodeGear and Embarcadero! Good luck in all the detail work that follows, gentlemen!
We look forward to many great things from you.
Warren Postma
Tekran
Greg,
Please don't forget about all us small or micro ISV out there and don't start a policy of pricing us out...Like Borland had started to do.
I know some people that use DBArtisan and love it, but from what I saw it is also super expensive, please don't apply super high pricing to Delphi!!
Greg,
hopefully you guys will see the need for PostgreSQL drivers for Delphi and have them crank out a DBexpress Driver for Delphi..
Fron what I see in your current product line you don't support many if any Open Source databases and PostgreSQL rivals Oracle in many regards.
I'm lazy but want to learn.
I need a link (single link) that downloads me every demo (trial, free, whatever) product you have. I want to starting learning them.
Notice the InfoWorld article that you attached lists C++ as the most used dev languauge. Yet your post does not mention C++, and the comments give only cursory mention.
C++Builder is an outstanding product, even though it has always had to play second fiddle to Delphi. Please don't let it get lost in the wash.
I suspect many C++Builder users are like me; even more loyal to the language than the vendor. With C++Builder, I get both my prefered language and vendor, but if my only choice is between Delphi and VisualC++, then I would finally be forced to go with MS.
One of CodeGear's primary strengths is the wide variety of dev tools. You seem to understand that, but the limited C++ mention gets me worried.
Greetings folks! Sorry for the delay but lots going on with JavaOne and other activities.
As I scan upwards and review the comments, I see such an exuberance of passion. It is refreshing. David I and I have been discussing the combining of these user bases and all the energy and idea streams that will be pouring in from our growing community network. All of you have very focused and direct statements about the products you love and have used for years and have concerns over direction. Let me put it this way: those products built the CodeGear franchise and are immensely important to the collective company moving forward. Any non-positive change to those products would be similar to the Embarcadero crew suddenly deciding to stop progress and momentum on tenured products such as DBArtisan and ER/Studio and obviously affect our new business. We’re as excited for what we call ‘core’ products (e.g. Delphi, C++ Builder, DBArtisan, ER/Studio, etc) as we are for our ‘emerging’ products (e.g. products being built on or for the Eclipse Community, RoR, PHP, our forthcoming database optimization products, etc). There’s so much work to integrate the teams, ideas, road maps, et al that I need you to forgive me if I am forgetting anything or leaving a product name out! It’s not intentional!
Also, the company is moving forward with an integrated set of immense talent. The magic will be the combining of ideas and the talent themselves to push forward in new directions to build product for software professionals. In fact, when I see some of my comments above like ‘business units’, etc, in reality I am really speaking to product categorization/grouping/branding. Business unit and like terminology is inaccurate as I am conceptualizing how we capitalize on a storied brand name in CodeGear to spawn like branded product groupings in the collective company as we move the ship forward.
David I are working on some communication vehicles as we drive the acquisition to close. We’ll be reaching out to you in many ways either in person or via web so please stay tuned as we round out these programs.
Again, thank you all for reading and taking the time to comment! It is incredibly important.
Greg
oh this is so great!
you're gonna like the new engineers from codegear. quite geniuses!
ps
now, as a delphi customer, i hope that:
1. delphi will grow (no doubts on this one) this time naturally, unobstructed by nepotism, politics, redmondism, you name it
2. we will be finally able to use delphi database connectivity sets of components (for your information, don't listen to swindel) most of us dropped thier database access layers since bde (dbexpress is a joke, ado is half backed, midas doesn't have true callbacks, et cetera, et cetera, et cetear)
so, i am extremely positive/optimistic and so is the vaste croud around me. delphi is in great hands now! (you obviously have a clue about what relational databases are all about!!!) lol
and, please give us a break with cat fish (oh, sorry, blach fish and other jokes alike)
executive summary:
great days are in front of you, please do not believe in anything they tell you, VERIFY all ranks with true (real life inspired) database design questions! do not let yourself fooled by their markting surveys (they're all fake)
and, again, verify their true database knowledge knowledge and abilities. you SHOULD be able to do this! that's why i am so happy that finally, delphi has good sheppards!
best regards,
anonymous
Greg,
Thanks for the great post, your quick responses, and the value you place on the CodeGear brand.
I appreciate your enthusiasm and welcoming response to your "introduction by comment" from the CodeGear community.
I look forward to meeting you in person, and showing you some of the things my team has cooked up since the announcement was made public. :)
John Kaster
Internet Services Architect
CodeGear
Hi!
I've been using Delphi since the first release and I've always loved it. There was a massive drop in quality when Delphi 2005 was released and the focus was on share holders and quarterly reports. The curve has, thank goodness, been pointing upwards since then and this has to be the best thing for the tools.
One thing that I would like to have is more involvement in the development from the end-users, us. Why? I'm a visually impaired developer and there are things in the current IDE that doesn't work very well. Most of the issues are very easy to fix if I only had the source... which I don't. I understand that the IDE developers cannot spend a lot of time making the product useable for a few people and a solution would be to involve end-users that are willing to contribute. This might be a good overall strategy because most of us Delphi-users want to have a future without spending most our time in Visual Studio.
It would be nice if you and David I could come to Sweden (or at least Scandinavia) so we can meet your "owners" in person. :)
I, too, echo the excitement, enthusiasm, and anxiety expressed by the other readers. Only $23 million? What a deal! If I'd known that I would have raized it myself through the Delphi community and started a CodeGear Co-Op. Finally, I can sell my Borland stock (at about a 70% loss) and be forever rid of the company that nearly strangled the most brilliant (and productive) development platform to ever grace a PC.
I wonder whether the EMbarcadero will open source for the delphi/kylix core compiler(non-ide) to develop the multi-platform for open standard.vzf
Hi, I was wondering what this would mean for the CodeGear Developer Network? Will CDN still be around? As well as other important sites for us developers, such as CodeCentral, QualityCentral etc. What are your plans for those? Thanks.
Great question Diego! The short answer: GROWTH. Why? We have a massive 'database software professional' user base poised to be moved in to the great framework and community in CDN.
CodembarcaGearo?
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