Sip From the Firehose: June 11,2003 - Borland solutions for the application lifecycle - customers and industry analysts tell the story

Wednesday, June 11, 2003
Madrid, Spain

Travelling around Europe talking about Borland ALM

I've been in Europe for the past 2 weeks. Actually, I have been to Moscow, Warsaw, London, and now Madrid. I've been meeting with customers, partners, and press showing them Borland's solutions for the application lifecycle for Java and .NET at seminars and meetings in Moscow and Madrid. I also presented Borland strategy, product roadmaps, and technical sessions at the Borland Developer Days conference in Warsaw and the Delphi Developer Conference outside London.

The response from everyone has been great to our strategy for improving the development process across the design, define, develop, test, deploy, and manage phases of a project's life. It's one thing to hear it from Borland, I think it is even better to hear the reactions from our customers, partners, and industry analysts. Below you will find a sample of what people, outside of Borland, are saying. First, let's start with some background information using quotes from Blake Stone, Borland's chief scientist. After that you can read the wonderful success story from St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, where they've reduced their development and delivery times for software by a 10x factor, reduced development costs by 80%, and more important than all of those business factors, they are "Finding Cures" and "Saving Children", using Borland ALM solutions including CaliberRM, Together Control Center, and StarTeam.

Blake Stone, Borland's Chief Scientist, sets the stage

"The recent changes in the Borland Product line reflect our continued focus on improving the state of the art in software development. It has become apparent that improvements in code authoring environments have outpaced improvements in other critical areas of the development process, and are determined to rebalance the situation.  This is why we have decided to expand our offerings to all of the roles involved in software construction, based on our own experiences with the most effective techniques for building world-class software."

"Why should developers have all the technology when they're only a part of the team?  Getting everyone in the game with software systems geared toward their part of the development lifecycle has enormous benefits. Requirements shouldn't be confined to static documents, designs captured in models cannot be allowed to drift from the reality of code, and collaboration with testers shouldn't be left to chance.  Even the operations group ultimately responsible for deploying and managing the system can benefit dramatically from having insight in to the requirements that drive the architectural design of the system."

"Anyone who ignores either aspect does so at the risk of failure, or lengthy delays at best, and yet many organizations focus primarily on the technology aspects of software design and construction!  At Borland we're embracing the notion that the entire team needs to share a collaborative space, whether they're sharing requirements, designs, code, defect reports, or simple conversations about the project.  While individuals are specialized in terms of their contributions, everyone benefits from participating in all aspects of the software lifecycle."

"In short, organizations ready to recognize the benefits of a truly collaborative solution will find Borland waiting with solutions in hand."

Customer Stories and Quotes

"Since changing to the Borland Solution we have reduced our development and delivery times by 10x. Previously, Protocol Databases took months and even years to deliver. Today, software is delivered at the rate of at least two to three Protocol Databases per month; the time from the first iteration of requirements gathering takes only a few weeks to delivery to the Clinical Researchers of standardized, interoperable, databases with enhanced reporting capabilities." Steve Young, Software Project Manager Case Study (PDF)

"As part of Six Sigma, our group was seeking ways to improve our quality and efficiency in our development efforts and found that the Borland ALM Solution delivered a quantifiable return in less than four months, we have seen a double digit increase in productivity, our delivery schedules have been compressed, training time and costs decreased and most importantly, the developers are satisfied. The Borland Solution has been a significant contributor to our group's ability to meet Six Sigma metrics." Srini Seshadri, General Manager, Global Marketing and Product Development

"Implementing the entire Borland ALM solution will dramatically increase communication, collaboration and traceability which reducing our time to market." Ron Wunder, Vice President New Product Development

"We have been working closely with Borland on improving quality in our development processes at Iberia. Borland was the only vendor able to offer us a state-of-the-art complete application lifecycle management solution, that we could integrate with our existing systems, and that also did not lock us in to any technology or platform. Borland was the only vendor who could demonstrate an efficient solution, based on open standards, that met all of our requirements in our software quality program." Luis Mariano Casado, Methodology Director

"The Borland ALM Solution provides our team with increased control over the development process - crucial in our enterprise with hundreds development team members. The Borland Solution delivers a truly integrated approach to development, enabling management of all our digital artifacts, including requirements." Steve Morling, Distinguished Member of Technical Staff

Industry Analyst Reports

Borland Delivers Domain Agnostic Solutions with Janeva IDC June, 2003

"Borland continues to stay on top of its game by providing developers with solutions that bridge the Java and .NET worlds. With its introduction of Janeva and C#Builder, Borland has provided an attractive value proposition for the development and deployment of "mixed-environment" enterprise-class applications. Organizations that want to take advantage of .NET and yet preserve their investments in robust J2EE and CORBA back ends can do so with ease." Analyst Report (PDF)

Accelerating J2EE Application Delivery META Group June, 2003

"Borland has formed a strong partnership with Mercury Interactive. This relationship provides integration of Mercury Interactives LoadRunner with Borlands JBuilder IDE and its Optimizeit. Integration of these products enables a developer to start a J2EE server running while attached to Optimizeit and then place the load on the system with LoadRunner." Analyst Report (PDF)

Borland - Excellence Endures

David Intersimone "David I"
Vice President, Developer Relations and Chief Evangelist
Borland Software Corporation
davidi@borland.com