Borland International Inc is teaming up with IBM Corp to work on a combined research and development project to maximize enterprise-wide Java application development. The companies will use Borland’s new JBuilder development environment with IBM’s San Francisco Project component environment (see separate story). The companies are trying to find ways to improve the Java development process through the integration of visual tools, object oriented components and Wizards. Borland chairman Del Yocam, speaking at the annual Borland Conference in Nashville, Tennessee earlier this week, said JBuilder developers have been working closely with the San Francisco team for about a year and are very pleased with the integration between JBuilder and the San Francisco codebase. In a separate announcement Borland has revealed it will be working on a developer-relations and marketing program called the Application Development Initiative in conjunction with IBM’s AS/400 division, with the intention to encourage the building of more client-server applications with Borland tools to support AS/400 business computers. The Initiative will have its own Web site by next month. Later in the current quarter, the IBM division plans to open up its World-Wide Porting Labs to provide developers with the means of porting existing client-server applications to the AS/400 platform. Plans are also under way for the companies to launch an international series of joint technological seminars in some 15 cities on client-server development for the AS/400.
