The first result of the acquisition of Ashton-Tate Corp by Borland International Inc will be substantial lay-offs at Ashton, which is about the same size as Borland in terms of sales, but has 1,700 employees where Borland has 1,000; according to Microbytes Daily, the Ashton-Tate name will disappear and the combined company will be headquartered at a new facility Borland is already building near its currentheadquarters in Scotts Valley; on the product front, our suggestion that Ashton’s Interbase database would be a key product (CI No 1,713) is confirmed – Philippe Kahn described it as well suited for transaction processing and for larger, more complex data types, and indicated that it will play a major role in future Borland offerings; other products, such as Ashton’s Mac-based Full Write, Full Impact and Control Room utility do not fit the current Borland plan – the company has dropped its Mac products; it did confirm that it is developing a word processor for Windows, and Ashton had been developing dBase for Windows, but Borland is further along with Object dBase; both companies insisted that dBase IV would continue but that there would be a migration path to 32-bit operating systems and client-server environments, likely via Interbase.
