There is some debate in the Delphi community. As previously covered, Dale Fuller has stepped down from the position of CEO. This is because of two quarters of poor profits. I believe it is sad since he has done so much good for the company (like fixing that whole name thing and putting the company back in the black). Now the rumor mill is going strong talking about splitting Delphi out into its own company.
Lino thinks Delphi being a separate company as a good thing, and he raises some great points. Jake on the other hand disagrees with him, and also raises some good points. One of the Anonymous comments to Lino's post raised the interested question about name. He suggested that Delphi should remain Borland Delphi, while the ALM & SDO company changed back to Inprise. Since Delphi has been Borland Delphi for longer then the ALM & SDO acronyms have existed that seems logical. Borland should already know that a name change can be very bad for your business.
Beyond the whole name thing, a major downside I see is the talent behind Delphi. Who gets to keep Danny and Allen's brains? I can't imagine either company wanting to part with them, not to mention all the other wonderful people behind Delphi. Where would Delphi be without David I? For that matter where would Borland be without him? Could anyone look through the list of Borland Bloggers and decide which should stay with Borland and which should go with Delphi? Granted Delphi and Borland has shown great resilience to brain drain in the past, but it still isn't considered a good thing.
An alternative that I would suggest is that Borland form a Delphi business unit. A lot of companies have multiple business units that are actually for all legal purposes a separate company. It would be a wholly owned subsidiary of Borland. It would have the resources it needs to build, promote and support Delphi within its own corporate hiarchy, and if certain individuals were needed in the parent company (or vice versa) then they should split their time as needed. Sure this isn't as nimble as if they were a completely separate company, but it solves the talent and branding issues. Besides I think Borland has more then adequately proven their ability to shift gears and change directions quickly.
Tags: [Programming] [Borland] [Delphi]
2 comments:
OK, so I for one think spinning Delphi off would be horibly bad. Sell it...really bad. Divition it...sort of bad.
Anyway, the idea of creating a company around one product like that would be doomed to failure. Spin off the entire Windows compiler divition and you might be talking, but those are the products that made Borland.
Then once that is done, who gets star team and all of the other side products go? These are integrated in to Delphi, and probably JavaBuilder as well (dont know for sure, I dont use it).
Really, if Borland wants to start spinning off products, they have lots of small products that really aren't as associated with the Borland name.
Since Delphi 2006 (or whatever the call it) will include Delphi, Delphi.NET, C# Builder and C++ Builder the only IDE left is JBuilder.
I agree though. For Borland to spin off thier Windows compilers would be like Micron PC to spin off their PC division. Oh yeah, they did that didn't they. Crazy!
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