Borland to offload IDEs

Many can claim to have seen the writing on the wall for some time, but Borland has recently confirmed that it has retained Bear Stearns to manage the sale of its entire dev tools portfolio, including Delphi, C++Builder, C#Builder and JBuilder.

The sale could be complete by the end of the year. A letter posted on Borland’s web site by its president, Tod Nielsen explains that the idea is to focus exclusively on Application Lifecycle Management, or ALM. He says that he hopes to create a standalone business around the IDEs. It is no secret that Borland’s development products have been under attack both from Open Source IDEs, such as Eclipse, and from Microsoft’s all in one Visual Studio IDE. In the coming year Borland plans to launch products dealing with IT Management and Governance, Requirements Definition and Management, Change Management, and Lifecycle Quality Management. It also states that it will help smooth transition to the new owner of the development products and continue to integrate its ALM offerings with theirs.