Borland to exit IDE market, focus on ALM

Borland Software Corp. plans to sell off its struggling Java development tools business to focus instead on selling services and products for managing software development, the company announced Wednesday.

Borland is seeking a buyer for its IDE (integrated development environment) business, which includes its Delphi and JBuilder products. The move will allow it to focus on growing its business in the area of application lifecycle management, or ALM, it said.

As part of the ALM focus, Borland also announced that it has agreed to buy Segue Software Inc., which makes software quality and testing products, in a transaction valued at about US$100 million.

Long known for its development tools, Borland has struggled to hold its footing in the IDE market amid tough competition -- particularly from Eclipse, an open-source Java IDE with similar functionality to Borland's JBuilder.

Revenue from its Java IDE products accounted for just 7 percent of total revenue in the third quarter of 2005, down from 15 percent in the same quarter a year earlier, it said in a U.S. regulatory filing in November.

The changes come a few months after Borland appointed a new president and chief executive officer, Tod Nielsen, a former executive at Oracle Corp., BEA Systems Inc. and Microsoft Corp. Nielsen replaced Dale Fuller, who resigned as Borland's CEO last July after the company reported weak sales for the second quarter.

Borland didn't name any potential bidders for the IDE products. It hopes they will form a standalone business that will allow continued investment in their development, Nielsen said in a letter to customers on Borland's Web site.

"We believe that separating [the IDE and ALM businesses] will enable both to flourish and grow more aggressively through targeted focus and investment," he wrote. The IDE business requires "a distinct business model and focused investments" that doesn't match Borland's ambitions in ALM, he said.

It is unclear whether Borland will find a buyer for the tools, however, particularly JBuilder, whose functionality overlaps most closely with Eclipse, said Bola Rotibi, a senior analyst for software development technologies with U.K. analyst company Ovum Ltd.

"JBuilder is a good tool," she said. "The thing is, if Borland didn't think it had a place for it, I'd be surprised if anyone else does, anyone major anyway."

Delphi, on the other hand, "has a strong market and a loyal following and is likely to be snapped up," she said.

The dramatic shift was seen as a necessary one for the 22-year-old company, as developers and vendors continue to embrace the open-source Eclipse IDE.

"I think this shows that Tod Nielsen has come into the camp, looked around and decided to shake up the company and put it in a position where it can make its mark," Rotibi said.

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