In 2003 it is possible, but in 2004, it’s definite, said Fuller in an interview with ComputerWire.
Strongly hinting that the application development and modeling company could already be in serious discussions with one or more targets, Fuller said that the negotiation and planning phase of the Togethersoft acquisition took a full year.
Some might say that’s overly cautious, he said, but we think it’s prudent. If a deal is certain to close in 2004, that means that the company could already be in serious talks. The company had cash and equivalents of $296m as of its latest financial statement, December 31.
Through its recent acquisitions Borland has set out its stall as a provider of software to cover what it sees as the entire application lifecycle, including development, modeling and deployment. Fuller said that customers today want tightly integrated development and modeling tools, hence the acquisition of Togethersoft and its modeling tool suite.
We were moving more and more towards code visualization, and Togethersoft was moving closer and closer to the code, said Fuller. It got to the point where we said if we compete, we will both die. It was obvious that it was better to combine and go after the enemy.
One such enemy was Rational Software Corp, which had moved beyond modeling toward code generation with its XDE product, and has since been acquired by IBM Corp. Fuller said that almost immediately after Rational was acquired by IBM, it wrote a letter to Borland dissolving their former partnership which saw the two offering hooks between each other’s development and modeling tools. We can continue to support the Rational API structure, but they’ve made it clear they’re not going to support anything except XDE, said Fuller.
Fuller declined to specify the areas where he sees acquisitions as being most likely, saying only that the company will continue with its focus on application development, modeling and deployment. Of offerings from the likes of IBM/Rational, Microsoft and BEA, Fuller said: The IT world has woken up to the fact that platform-dependent solutions are prisons. They don’t want to be locked into something they don’t have control over.
Regarding recent speculation that Microsoft could respond to IBM’s Rational acquisition by buying Borland to add its software to its own application development tools, Fuller said: Obviously we are a public company and if Microsoft put in an offer of $50bn then I would have to consider that, but it is clear that the value to customers and shareholders is in remaining independent – the fact that we support multiple languages and platforms.
Since the Togethersoft and Starbase deals closed in January, the three companies’ sales forces have been combined, and have been trained to sell each other’s products. There is already a level of integration that enables developers to visualize their code with models, and also move from the model back to the underlying code.
As for the company’s anticipated .NET development environment, expected in summer and codenamed Sidewinder, Fuller was tight-lipped, saying only that the development work is still on target. He did confirm that Sidewinder will enable development using Microsoft’s C Sharp language, but did not say which other languages will be supported. Borland recently announced it was the first to license the Microsoft .NET framework software development kit (SDK), and has outlined its intention for its various products to support the .NET framework.
Source: Computerwire
