back to article Serena Software to pick over Borland's remains

Serena Software appears to have woken from its dreamy web 2.0 mash-up hiatus and begun circling over the remains of ALM competitor Borland Software. While the soon-to-be-acquired Borland awaits digestion by MicroFocus, Serena intends to poach some customers during the process. The company has launched a promotion where …

COMMENTS

This topic is closed for new posts.
  1. smellmyfinger

    Once competitor to Microsoft...

    ... now a 75M$ shell being picked over by fourth tier ???? companies.

    Wow.

    Philippe Kahn may own one of the biggest houses locally, although one of his ex's now lives in it, and have a good track record as a serial entrepreneur post-Borland.

    But what a cock-up his successors have made of his first baby.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Unhappy

    @smellmyfinger

    Agreed. I used Borland tools from Pascal 3 up to Delphi 7, it's sad to watch.

    The whole ALM thing was a mistake, as was the Aston-Tate buy-out and letting the accountants dictate releases. Delphi 8, anyone? Didn't think so.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Your kidding right??

    Serena is financially challenged to stay afloat much have the option of acquiring a company. Also they have long since decided ALM is not for them and that Mashups is the way of the world (though the world is not there yet).

    I can't imagine Silverlake would invest more money at this point given they have been in the red with Serena almost from the get go once they replaced the leadership that had successfully taken them the point they were.

    A bit sad frankly.

  4. Graham Lockley

    How sad...

    ...to see a once great and innovative company having its bones picked over by the vultures (with all due respect to El Reg)

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Shame Borland use to be very impressive

    but this is just another Open Source casualty.

    Development tools are so well represented in Open Source that it makes virtually impossible to compete in that market.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Paris Hilton

    Borland? They're still in business?

    I thought they died with WordPerfect Corp. But the again I thought Compuserve died a decade or so ago too.

    Paris, because she'd be surprised too.

  7. Eddie Johnson
    WTF?

    A Challenge for Reg Readers

    I challenge someone to provide a useful, practical definition of ALM in 3 sentences or less.

    Can't? That's why its worthless.

  8. Jolyon Smith
    Unhappy

    Borland didn't die because of Delphi

    They died because of what they tried to DO with Delphi... i.e. follow Microsoft down the .NET route, believing the MS BS that .NET was the way of the future (back when MS still beliebved it themselves I guess). But no-one can compete with Microsoft in the .NET space because Microsoft have finally managed to close the gap between language, IDE and runtime framework. Anyone else is always going to be playing a very obvious game of catch-up in that space.

    Borland compounded their error by trying to make Delphi and the VCL a single-source language for Win32/.NET applications, ignoring the very different nature of native code and managed code that makes any such attempt a hopeless mess, and relying on their cash cow to keep the $$$'s rolling in with minimal investment/development $$$'s while they went chasing after the ALM market.

    Borland realised their mistake, but too late. They eventually refocussed on native code development but by then needed to sell off the family silver to keep the bailiffs away from the door. So Delphi got snapped up by Embarcadero where it is enjoying something of a rennaissance as it continues down it's renewed native code development focus.

    Microsoft have pretty much abandoned native code development tools, despite the fact that native code itself will not be going away any time soon (most new API's even in Windows 7 are native code), leaving a HUGE open goal for commercial, native code alternatives.

    As for Open Source (for Windows development, specifically), the people looking for high productivity native code development tools for RAD desktop application development aren't looking at Open Source, or if they are, they quickly find that whilst there are Open Source languages and IDEs, there aren't really any viable native code Open Source frameworks ready for prime time in order to facilitate the RAD approach they want/need.

    So whilst it's sad for Borland, it's pretty much the best possible outcome for Delphi.

    Delphi is left sitting pretty, whilst Borland pay the price for their gullibility without dragging Delphi down with the sinking ship.

This topic is closed for new posts.