Borland stands tall on profitability

Borland Systems Inc. executives trumpeted the company's profitability, cross-platform support, and integration capabilities during an opening keynote session at the BorCon conference in San Jose, California, Sunday evening.

Officials also fielded audience questions about issues such as support of the Eclipse open source tools initiative.

Borland President and Chief Executive Officer Dale Fuller touted the financial strength of the company.

"We've had 14 quarters of continuous revenue growth, profitability, [and] cash flow," Fuller said. "This company's [going to] stay around for another 20 years," he said.

Borland, Fuller said, is committed to being a multiplatform tools vendor and helping customers maintain investments.

"Our strategy is very, very simple. We're focusing on multipath, multiprocessor, multiplatform, so that nobody gets stuck," on the same system for 15 years, Fuller stressed.

"Our mission at Borland is all about helping our customers, you, and your customers move into the future without abandoning the past," he said.

Borland wants to enable a digital world regardless of whether the platform is wireless, .Net, C++, or another platform, Fuller said. The company also acknowledges software development is a team initiative these days, he said.

"It really is a team sport now; how do you get there faster and how do you build better software faster," Fuller said.

Responding to an audience question concerning the Eclipse open source tools initiative, Blake Stone, Borland's chief technology officer, said the company already offers some degree of support. "It's something that we actually do have some integration with today because we believe in choice," Stone said.

"Borland's goal is not domination, it's making sure that we play the right role and provide the right technology, so I think you'll see that we'll coexist [with Eclipse] quite nicely," Stone added.

The controversial issue of offshore application development outsourcing also came up during the session.

"Business is business. Companies will always go to the lowest cost producers," said David Intersimone, Borland vice president of developer relations. Making laws to limit offshore outsourcing only makes competitors overseas stronger, he said.

"The thing that the U.S. really leads in is innovation," and that must be leveraged, Intersimone said.

Stone added that Borland does work with developers around the globe. "Our developers in Russia aren't there because they're cheap. They're there because they are good," said Stone.

Intersimone and Stone also stressed Borland's commitment to the Win32 platform and Borland's Delphisoftware.

"We're not giving up on Win32. It's going to be around for, well, years," Intersimone said.

Intersimone declined to comment on the ongoing legal battle between The SCO Group and Linux vendors, concerning the use of what SCO claims is Unix code for which SCO holds the rights.

"That's really a battle between SCO and the Linux community," Intersimone said.

Stone told attendees to stay tuned for a presentation Monday on integration, promising it would demonstrate Borland's innovation.

"We're going to show you integration that really has never been seen in the software industry before," Stone said.

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