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 With
over three million developers worldwide using Borland’s
tools, the company is positioned comfortably to take a lead
in the Web services game. Sam Ghebranious, managing
director for Borland in the Indian Sub-Continent, talks to
Pankaj Mishra in Bangalore about Borland’s strategy
for Web services and on how the company is going to leverage
India for moving ahead
*
How is Borland positioned in the Web services world?
We have recently announced our support for Microsoft’s
.Net platform. Borland Delphi and Borland C++ Builder will
support building managed code applications that run within
the .Net framework, including ASP.Net. We are planning to
release development products supporting .Net by the second
half of 2002. The products will be e-optimised on Intel Architecture.
Delphi is the first rapid application development environment
for Windows that fully supports Web services.
With Borland’s solutions, companies do not have to throw
away existing source code, objects and applications. They
can start with existing systems and migrate to .Net by using
our tools. We will expand the functionality of our products
for allowing our customers to move to .Net. Borland’s
strategy includes application interoperability across languages
and operating systems through XML-based Web services.
* What are your plans for India?
There are more than three million developers worldwide who
use Borland’s tools and India is home to around three
percent of this community. Indian companies have a strong
presence in the system integration business, therefore we
have always wanted to work in tandem with them. We are talking
to a few Indian software companies for partnering with them
in the area of system integration. Borland has got a virtual
team in the country to assist the developer community here.
Borland’s products are distributed in the country by
three distributors Ingram Micro, Wipro Infotech and Sonata
Software. However, we are looking at partnering with Indian
companies now for adopting a direct model to make inroads
into large enterprise accounts worldwide. We will introduce
our ‘Enterprise Partner’ programme in the country
for aligning with end-to-end enterprise solutions providers.
Indian ISVs are very competent, therefore it is difficult
to select a partner. We are also open to partnering with ISVs
in the country because Borland has Java solutions for mobile
sets.
* Will you also support competing architectures like SunONE
from Sun Microsystems?
Our alliance with Microsoft is in its early stages and by
next quarter or so, there will be increased thrust on moving
closely with Microsoft for rolling out products. That doesn’t
mean we will shy away from supporting other platforms like
SunONE. We have been supporting J2EE for long and Java has
always been one of Borland’s core competencies. We are
open to multiple platforms, but it all depends on our customers.
According to Gartner, close to half of all new projects will
use both Java and Microsoft technologies. Only Borland provides
tools that bridge J2EE and .Net. As a matter of fact, Borland
is an executive committee member of the Java Community Process,
a leading standards body for the Java2 platform. We would
like to move along with industry leaders in leveraging new
business opportunities like Web services.
* How will you bridge J2EE and .Net?
J2EE and .Net interoperability is central to our Web services
strategy. Our products like Delphi6, JBuilder and Borland
Enterprise servers are coming with J2EE/EJB and .Net Web services
interoperability built-in. All our .Net-based tools can work
seamlessly with J2EE-based solutions. Today, we are the only
company in the world to offer such solutions. Our .Net solutions
provide freedom of platform choice to companies.
* Will you also support .Net on Linux?
Borland will continue to evaluate .Net options for Linux.
But Borland Kylix will continue to support the development
of Linux executable applications. We will also evaluate C#.
* Who are some of your biggest clients and partners?
AOL, Cisco, Deutsche Bank, Charles Schwab and Intel are some
big customers. We also have strong alliances with Apple, IBM,
Intel, Microsoft, Novell, HP, Oracle, Siemens, SAP and Sun
Microsystems.
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