Borland.CodeGear Nov 15, 2006 12:02
CodeGear was announced yesterday. It's a wholly owned subsidiary of Borland. We don't know much, but I'm not terribly optimistic about the situation.
Yes, I believe it is already better than it was before when Borland ALM had direct involvement/control over the developer tools products. But, Borland ALM still owns CodeGear. Undoubtedly, CodeGear will have some fiscal responsibility towards Borland ALM; I'll just say that some form of "dividend" will be paid. Borland ALM can still sell, liquidate or kill CodeGear when it wants to, as it still owns it...all of it.
I also doubt there will be an infusion of cash to drive development of existing and new products. In the best world where the investment community is willing to pay a good price to acquire an asset like CodeGear, there is a high likelihood that they would increase investment into growing their acquired asset. As it is now, I doubt Borland ALM will pump any more money into CodeGear. It's far more likely that they'll suck out "dividends".
My biggest frustration with all of this is that they spent 9 months to form CodeGear. They tried to find a buyer, left their customers and future direction in limbo during that period to end up doing something they could have executed very quickly. They could have done this as a starting point initially and then spent these past 9 months looking for suitable investors to purchase CodeGear. It's really quite sad to see how they screwed up this process to the detriment of their industry/customer standing.
FMPOV, all the spin, and yes it's spin, to explain why Borland didn't sell CodeGear to another company boils down to money. Perhaps I'm a bit cynical when it comes to the investment community, but in my experience everything in that community comes down to money. It's not refered to as the "almighty" dollar for nothing. Borland can claim it was because of "fit" reasons, but money can make any offer "fit".
On the positive side, the drama is at least done with and we can move forward. I'm just not sure exactly how much has actually changed. We'll see. We better hope Borland ALM succeeds too or they'll be selling off CodeGear to the highest bidder as soon as they can and they'll make it "fit".
One last comment: ISTM that noone wanted this as the outcome. Is this a sign of a good compromise, or a sign that things were screwed up? I don't know. We'll find out.
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