Expert View

September 23, 2003
Wireless Java devices likely to boom: Borland

Geetanjali Wadhwa & Pradeep Chakraborty

BANGALORE -- Borland, a provider of vendor-neutral solutions that work on multiple platforms, is a leader in Java development, Linux development, independent development path to Microsoft .NET and mobile development. It recently announced agreements with SAP and IBM to distribute Borland Together Edition for SAP NetWeaver Studio and Together Edition for Eclipse, underscoring its promise to provide cross-platform solutions that offer greater flexibility.

In April this year, it introduced application lifecycle management strategy for the Microsoft .NET framework, integrating the definition, design, development, testing, deployment, and management stages of the software application lifecycle. This solution underscores the ongoing Borland relationship with Microsoft and its commitment to help organisations create software applications for the Microsoft .NET framework. IDC has recognised Borland as the leading Java IDE vendor with a 33.9 percent revenue share.

Convergence plus met up with Satyen Parikh, managing director, India sub-continent, Borland, to find out more about the firm's initiatives in Java and its future plans. Excerpts from an interview.

Convergence Plus: Please comment on Borland's strategic relationships with Java industry leaders and what it means to the Java community?

Satyen Parikh: We have built strategic partnerships with key industry leaders in the Java space and offer customers market-leading solutions that address the entire Java application lifecycle. With over 1.5 million licenses of Borland JBuilder sold to date, Borland has helped build Java into the most used programming language among developers, and we will continue to provide solutions that help enterprises build the Java-based applications customers require.

We have recently issued a series of announcements that confirmed our company's commitment to deliver solutions that accelerate the development of high-performance Java applications. This coincided with Borland's platinum sponsorship of the JavaOne conference. JavaOne, one of the world's largest developer conferences on Java technology, was the perfect venue to discuss how Borland is changing the way enterprises build high-performance Java-based applications.

We recently introduced the newly globalised versions of Caliber and StarTeam, signaling Borland's commitment to provide solutions that help companies collaborate globally in the local languages of their development teams and customers.

Borland's JDataStore database -- that is compliant with Java and SQL92 standards -- features a very small footprint and requires practically zero maintenance. It delivers the performance, scalability and synchronisation capabilities of a full-power database. Borland also introduced the new Enterprise Studio 6 for Java, which offers a bundle of award winning, tightly integrated technologies designed to help enterprises deliver better software, faster with greater return on investment.

Together, with companies such as BEA Systems, Crystal Decisions, Droplets, Inc., Flowfinity, Hewlett-Packard, Mercury Interactive, NewMonics, ObjectVenture, Openwave, Oracle, Savvion, Solarmetric, Sybase, VisualSoft, and ZeroG, Borland provides solutions that are designed to be interoperable and work well with a broad assortment of products supporting Java technology.

The key to accelerated performance on enterprise Java based applications has an efficient and tight integration within define (customer analysis) - design (modeling) - develop. Borland is committed to supporting open standards, and hence, it is of no surprise that we are recognised as one strategic company that is amiable and strategic to many IT vendors in this space.

CP: How strong is your commitment to provide vendor-neutral solutions that work on multiple platforms?

SP: Borland is committed to providing vendor-neutral solutions that work on multiple platforms. We have been recognised by analysts and customers as the leader in Java development, Linux development, independent development path to Microsoft .NET and mobile development.

We have announced agreements with SAP and IBM to distribute Borland Together Edition for SAP NetWeaver Studio and Together Edition for Eclipse, underscoring the Borland promise to provide cross-platform solutions that offer greater flexibility and freedom of choice.

In April 2003, we introduced our application lifecycle management strategy for the Microsoft .NET framework, integrating the definition, design, development, testing, deployment, and management stages of the software application lifecycle. This solution underscores the ongoing Borland relationship with Microsoft and its commitment to help organisations easily create software applications for the Microsoft .NET framework.

In addition, IDC recognised Borland as the leading Java IDE vendor with a 33.9 percent revenue share. We remain committed to the delivery of solutions to accelerate the delivery of high-performance Java applications across the application lifecycle.

CP: How is Borland accelerating the application development lifecycle for wireless Java-based devices?

SP: The Borland Mobile Studio, Borland Enterprise Studio for Mobile and Borland Jbuilder 9 Mobile Edition suites offer mobile productivity enhancements for organizations developing in Java and C++ languages. Borland Mobile Studio targets application development for mobile devices, while Borland Enterprise Studio for Mobile extends this capability across the enterprise. The Borland JBuilder 9 Mobile Edition is specifically for developers targeting mobile devices for the Java 2 platform, mobile edition (J2ME). The new mobile products integrate the latest software development kits (SDKs) from Nokia and SonyEricsson. These product advances reflect the work of Borland with leading mobile companies such as Nokia, SonyEricsson and Symbian to address the needs of a growing mutual customer-base. IDC's current forecast for the mobile development and deployment market calls for a 2001-2006 compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 57 percent, increasing the market size from just under $87.8 million in 2001 to $836.1 million in 2006.

CP: How is the mobile and C++ solutions group advancing Java for the telco industry?

SP: To address the growing mobile market, we have added a number of products, including Borland JBuilder 9 Mobile Edition, Borland Mobile Studio and Borland Enterprise Mobile Studio that enable developers to quickly build and deploy highly mobile solutions. To further establish our foothold in the mobile application development market, we have announced a new agreement with SonyEricsson to distribute and support the SonyEricsson Java SDK through the Borland JBuilder 9 Mobile Edition, accelerating the application development lifecycle for wireless Java-based devices. Nokia's handsets run on Borland C++ solutions as well.

Borland Mobile Studio and Borland Enterprise Mobile Studio offer mobile productivity enhancements for organisations developing in Java and C++ languages. As earlier mentioned Borland Mobile Studio targets application development for mobile devices, while Borland Enterprise Studio for Mobile extends this capability across the enterprise. Borland JBuilder 9 Mobile Edition is specifically for developers targeting mobile devices for J2ME.

CP: How is Borland Enterprise Studio beneficial for enterprises, and what sort of applications development does it address?

SP: The Borland Enterprise Studio is an integrated platform used for designing, developing, testing and deploying Java business and e-commerce solutions. It helps boost productivity of the project team, improve the quality and performance of the applications, and provides a competitive advantage by being able to deliver better software faster.

Borland Enterprise Studio 6 for Java includes "design-develop-test" solutions -- the Borland Together modeling environment, the market-leading Borland Jbuilder development environment, Borland Optimizeit Suite performance tools, development licenses for Borland Enterprise Server and the powerful Borland JdataStore all-Java database, and integration with the Borland Caliber requirements management and Borland StarTeam software configuration management systems.

Business applications form a key driver in helping achieve the objective of any enterprise. Some enterprises are re-building their entire set of applications to counter challenges and some enterprise plan to leverage their existing investments in applications to be Web-enabled/net driven.

In either of the scenarios, be it in telco/banking, finance, manufac-turing or government, criticality for the enterprise is how quickly they can get to the market without their envisioned value service which helps them increase their business revenues.

CP: What are your strategies for the APAC region and India over the next six months to a year?

SP: In 2003, Borland completes its 20th anniversary of technological leadership. We are constantly striving to capture increased mind share for our software development and application infrastructure solutions: JBuilder, Delphi and TogetherSoft ahead of the competition. With comprehensive solutions designed to simplify and automate the critical phases of the application lifecycle and provide SCM capabilities, we believe we have a significant opportunity to market our solutions to major global enterprises.

Our strategy is to continue to successfully market our product range into large enterprises. This involves tightly integrating our products with one another, especially with our JBuilder products, to create a "pull through" effect. We are also targeting markets such as financial services, technology, telecommunications and manufacturing industries, which is where our traditional strength and experience lies. We also plan to increase our sales force that will strengthen our market reach and enable our products to reach a wider audience. In addition, we plan to build key relationships with major system integrators. A key part of our technology strategy is to develop solutions for the .Net platform. We will continue to invest in R&D efforts related to the .Net platform, further enhancing our strategic relationship with Microsoft.

As mentioned earlier, we are also constantly increasing the integration and range of our product suites. In past 12 months, we have introduced 15 new products; notables among those include Delphi 7 Studio Architect with preview capabilities for the Microsoft. Net Framework, C#Builder for MS.Net Framework (a JBuilder alike IDE for .Net), JBuilder 9, Optimizeit ServerTrace and Optimizeit Profiler for MS.Net (for server level and developer level Performance Testing), Borland C++ Mobile Edition for developing wireless applications, Janeva (addressing the J2EE / CORBA and MS.Net seamless integration issues without any learning curve) and Borland Enterprise Team Edition (an extension to our popular application server product family, to name a few.

We initiated an innovative program, the Borland ALM partner program that addresses most of the unique requirements our Indian market has today. We have, in the past 10 months, initiated academic programs targeting the intellectual base in academic institutions as well.

CP: Would you like to comment on the mobile OS battle for applications development?

SP: The space is hotting up. Borland was one of the early entrants to realize the impact the wireless would have on the business world, and it is therefore no surprise that today Borland is one of the strategic partners and associates of major players in this space. We have already built products that ride on the popular Symbian OS and have definite plans to support the others, as they become popular. Symbian, by default, has definitely taken a lion's share in this space today.

CP: How do you see the prospects and future for wireless Java-based devices?

SP: Wireless Java-based devices are going to be the subsequent boom for the wireless industry. The industry has touted Java as the platform of choice for wireless developers; yet, there is very little evidence of any compelling wireless applications developed in J2ME. Cahners In-Stat/MDR predicts that the wireless Java market will grow at a rate of over 80 percent a year through to 2005.

Java promises to bring the best of the Net -- the ability to display real-time news, for example -- to your telephone handset. In North America, Nextel is aggressively pushing Java handsets, selling 1.3 million so far. Motorola says all its new handsets will have Java. Finland's Nokia, the world's largest mobile-phone maker, will put Java in a quarter of all new models. Vodafone, the world's second-largest wireless operator, is also keen to improve on its WAP offerings and is gearing up for Java.

The ARC Group, UK predicts that all Net-connected wireless phones will be Java-enabled in the next five years. Specifically, the study predicts that more than 1.1 billion phones will be capable of running Java applications by 2006. The report notes that 8 million i-mode users in Japan have already upgraded to Java-supported phones. It predicts that the success of Java enabled phones will be duplicated on all the global markets.

Borland C++ Mobile Edition, together with the Borland C++Builder development environment, offers ANSI/ISO-compliant C++. Borland C++ Mobile Edition supports the Symbian Operating System (OS) and integrates with the Nokia Series 60 SDK.

When combined with their respective Borland IDEs, JBuilder and Borland C++ Mobile Edition include visual design tools for debugging, creating mobile applications, and emulating mobile devices. This combination also delivers the full slate of high-productivity capabilities available in these award-winning development environments.

CP: Please comment on your alliance with SAP. Are there other such alliances in the pipeline?

SP: Borland's association with SAP AG is built around our Together Edition for SAP NetWeaver. Borland's Together Edition for SAP NetWeaver Developer Studio extends the functionality of the SAP NetWeaver to support the modeling of software projects, all from within the SAP framework. This integrates modeling into the entire application development lifecycle, providing development teams with superior design, analysis and real-time collaboration capabilities that help enterprises to deliver better software. This is the latest example of Borland's commitment to the product line and its customers.

We announced a strategic relationship and global agreement to embed and distribute the TIBCO Enterprise for Java messaging service (JMS) engine with Borland enterprise server, team edition and future versions of Borland enterprise server.

Borland and TIBCO help customers enhance IT cost control through application integration and interoperability across mixed technology organisations. The technology integration optimises J2EE application communication, scalability, and performance in high-volume transactional environments within vertical markets such as telecom and financial services. Independent software vendors who embed the Borland enterprise server within their products benefit as well.