January 19, 2009

Tod Nielsen abandons Borland for VMware

No amount of good execution could have made up for the flawed strategy at Borland

In what may go down as the best career salvage move of the century, CEO Tod Nielsen has left his post at Borland in order to take a COO position under Paul Maritz at VMware. Nielsen previously worked with Maritz back at Microsoft for more than 10 years running their developer program and ultimately managing the platform division.

Nielsen took on the CEO role at Borland in 2005 after a brief stint at Oracle and several years at BEA as part of the acquisition of Crossgain. The current situation at Borland leaves little doubt as to the reasons behind Nielsen's departure. The company's stock is trading under $1, reaching a five-year low from a peak of around $10 in 2005. Borland's market capitalization now lies at just over $50 million, far less than the company's annual revenue run rate of around $180 million. In mid-2008, Nielsen divested of Borland's once-great tools division for a paltry $23 million to Embarcadero, a move that left the company with a sharper focus, but relatively stagnant performance.

If leaving Borland is Nielsen's best career move of late, then no doubt joining Borland was his worst. Perhaps better execution might have improved Borland's fortunes, but I think this is likely a case where the strategy itself was broken. As I mentioned last week, no amount of good execution can fix a fundamentally flawed strategy. Perhaps with more runway, Borland's focus on ALM might have made more progress. But even that seems to be a bet that ignores bigger changes in the industry toward distributed Web development, cloud computing, and open source.

No doubt Nielsen is in a better position to leverage these trends at VMware.

White Paper

D2D Virtual Tape Library Replication Primer

This whitepaper explains the terminology and concepts behind Data Replication technologies and establishes some sizing rules through worked examples. Learn the new paradigm in disaster tolerance—protect data anywhere.

Download now »

Trial

Free 30-Day Desktop Virtualization Trial

Download a free 30–day trial and experience how XenDesktop delivers a pristine, on–demand desktop experience to users on whatever device they choose, while cutting IT complexity and costs.

Download now »

White Paper

Why Your Firewall, VPN, and IEEE 802.11i Aren't Enough to Protect Your Network

The emergence of WLANs has created a new breed of security threats to enterprise networks.

Included in HP ProCurve WLAN solutions is security technology that alleviates threats from WLANs through:
* Monitoring wireless activity inside and out of the enterprise
* Classifying WLAN transmissions into harmful and harmless
* Preventing transmissions that pose a security threat to the enterprise network
* Locating participating devices for physical remediation

Download now »

Sign up to receive InfoWorld Resource Alerts

Subscribe to the Today's Headlines: First Look Newsletter

Find out what will be news for the day, with our first-thing-in-the-morning briefing.

©1994-2009 Infoworld, Inc.