Borland: Interest, but no buyer yet, for tools line

Executive details intentions, provides progress report on sale of developer tools

Frieberg: No, we don’t have any buyers lined up. We have had, I think, over 10, I think the number is up to 12, interested parties right now looking at this. So, there’s a lot of interest there.

IW: You say there are interested parties, but they’re not buyers. Does that mean they’ve looked at it and then decided no, or what’s the deal there?

Frieberg: It’s just part of the process. We’ve had over 10 entities express interest in acquiring these assets.

IW: Do you expect any announcement shortly?

Frieberg: No. There’s a process that we’re working through with the bankers. Our bankers are Bear Stearns; we’ve laid out a process. And, since the announcements, we’ve had interest expressed.

IW: Can you tell me who some of the interested parties might be? And how much money you might get for selling these off?

Frieberg: I’m not the right person to comment on that. The key issue is that, what [new Borland CEO Tod Nielsen] did do with the [Borland] board is express [that] it’s more around finding the right buyer, it’s not about finding the best price. So, it is a board-level commitment that it’s finding the best buyers because we have and will have a lot of joint customers going forward. We need to find the right buyer who will be synergistic with Borland going forward, and it’s not just about selling the assets at the best price.

IW: When you say it's about finding the best buyer, does that mean it will be somebody who would continue with these products?

Frieberg: Oh, absolutely. Not just continue [but] invest in them, build the business. And we will still have a lot of integration and synergies between these products as IDEs and the ALM lifecycle.

IW: What’s been the reaction? Has there been a lot of uproar among the Delphi and JBuilder users? I imagine they can’t be too happy about this.

Frieberg: No, actually, all of the user groups that I’ve looked at, if I look at the blogs and things, it’s actually been very positive. So it really is around enthusiasm for these products. And the users of the products realize that because we’re not focused on financial gain, and we’re focused on their longevity and their commitment to the product. We’ll find a buyer who’s going to take care of them very effectively. Honestly, I actually expect customer expectations [to go] up about the commitment to the products themselves.

IW: Could you just elaborate on your relationship with Eclipse at this time?

Frieberg: Yes. We were one of the founding members of Eclipse. So, Borland and a few other companies have been in Eclipse since day one. Today, we’re [at the] strategic developer level within Eclipse, which is the highest level an ISV can have. And, we’re behind Eclipse. We are leading specific projects within Eclipse. We’ve had such great success with those projects that Eclipse has asked us to lead other projects. And, we are also moving a significant portion of our tooling that -- in essence the requirements management, the modeling, SCM (software configuration management) components -- to have visualizations within Eclipse.

IW: I guess a lot of people probably would not have been surprised that you’re getting out of the Java IDE business, but I think perhaps there is some surprise about selling off Delphi. Is there anything more you can say about why that shouldn’t be a surprise, or do you understand why it might be a surprise?