AS THE CEO of Borland, Dale Fuller has been quietly resurrecting a once great name in the application development arena. With the release of Delphi 6, Borland is a major player in the emerging Web services market. In an interview with InfoWorld Editor in Chief Michael Vizard, Fuller talks about what it take to compete with Microsoft for the hearts and minds of developers.

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InfoWorld: What kind of shape is Borland in today?


Fuller: The reality is where we've made the turn as a corporation. If you look at the business metrics, we're going into our eighth consecutive quarter of profitability. And we throw off $10 million to $15 million of what we call "free cash flow" every quarter. So we're making lots of money, which is pretty great. In fact, we're probably the only software company that can actually claim that today. We have almost a third of a billion dollars sitting in the bank today versus where we were three years ago when we were almost bankrupt. All of this is testament to the fact that we've been executing on our strategy, which is to build great technology that's relevant today and helps our customers move into the future without abandoning the past.

InfoWorld: To what do you attribute this success?

Fuller: We've been very lucky, and the market has done things to us that have been very good. We're the No. 1 Java player. We are head and shoulders above everyone. We've eroded everyone else's market share and we have a gigantic market share with Java today.

InfoWorld: What impact will Web services technology have on your company?

Fuller: We're leading the market in Web services today. We have the only development platform that's commercially available using Web services. And it integrates very well with our current technology. Let's say you're a J2EE [Java 2, Enterprise Edition] person, but you have to use Microsoft.NET in the future. We're the only guys who bridge that gap. We unify those two platforms, and that's really exciting. I'm thankful Microsoft hasn't woken up to that yet because it gives us a tremendous opportunity to continue to grow as a corporation.

InfoWorld: What is Borland's relationship with Microsoft these days, and will you support C#?

Fuller: We are absolutely looking at [C#]. Our goal is to make sure that our customers who want to use C# have that ability. But again, we don't want customers to have to abandon what they've already done. We're trying to create a unifying strategy, where you can take code that you've developed today -- whether it's in Delphi, Kylix, J-Builder, or Visual Studio -- and move that into C#, or move stuff that you've developed using C# into other platforms, too. That's our opportunity.

InfoWorld: Why will the ability to bridge these two environments matter?

Fuller: Corporations today do not have a single platform. What we offer on all of our products is the cross-platform ability to develop, deploy, and manage your applications. The ubiquity of being able to develop these applications gives you that freedom of being able to quickly develop, manage, and deploy things.

InfoWorld: What do you see as the core value of Web services?

Fuller: It really opens the door. It delivers on the promise of the Internet. What the Internet has been up to today is a way to show pages. Web services now gives me the ability to quickly make stuff happen that I never was able to do before. And that's unique. The doors are going to open wide to new concepts and new ideas that we never thought of and never could even perceive because of the limitations of the environment.

InfoWorld: What impact will Web services have on systems integrators?

Fuller: Consultants will have to be more than just sweat labor. They will have to actually use their brains a little bit more in creation of new business principles and new business ideas. The key thing that people will measure now is time to benefit. That is going to be compressed, and people are going to really measure that. There's still is a high demand for really great systems integrators who can help me deliver on the promise. But the systems integrators are going to have to work a little harder for their living.

InfoWorld: What impact does an extended downturn in the economy have on a company like Borland?

Fuller: An economic slowdown also slows down technology adoption. And with that being slow, innovation slows down as well. We don't get to see all the permutations of all the variables of how people really can use this. And we don't open people's minds to be able to create new concepts or open our doors to new ideas. So that slows down technology innovation. Right now, we've got three million developers using the product to develop applications for 30 million customers. From that, you get a lot of great feedback that gives you new ideas and new concepts. But when that's cut in half or cut into fourths or whatever, it slows down some of those ideas and concepts.

InfoWorld: What is Borland's core strength?

Fuller: Our desire for change is much greater than the ability to change. Part of the big problem is that people need to integrate legacy technology, applications, and data into new technology that has no backward integration. With all our architecture today, whether you're using CORBA architecture, J2EE architecture, Web services architecture, we have all those integrated into our products, which allow you to integrate seamlessly into legacy data. So now you can truly bring forward that information and that data and integrate it into your new technology. That's a unique proposition that I think Borland can offer.