Aiming to pull corporate infrastructure developers their direction, IBM
and Borlandtoday signed a distribution
and marketing deal to bring together their database and development tools.
The deal aims to attract both Linux and Windows developers, pitting together
IBM’s DB2 database software with Borland’s Rapid Application Development
(RAD) set of developer tools.
“Borland has a great following among a broad developer community and for a
lot of platform companies there is a lot attention being paid to courting
development communities,” said Dirk Coburn, an analyst at IDC,
While many are speculating that IBM is hoping to tap into Borland’s
popularity among the community of smaller enterprises developing Visual
Basic, Jeff Jones, director of strategy for IBM’s data management solutions
division, played down any specific move aimed at VB developers.
“Our main goal is to get more and more developers on whatever development
platform to chose DB2 for their database,” said Jones. “We are not in the
middle of any sort of push, on the IBM side, to target Visual Studio and
Visual C++ developers, we’re just interested in getting DB2’s capabilities
across a wider choice of development environments.”
Coburn notes that IBM will benefit from Borland’s popularity among
cross-platform developers.
“There’s a large segment of the development community that really
appreciates the independence and cross-platform story and Borland, as a
company providing development technology, has a pretty convincingly
cross-platform story to tell,” said Coburn. “That’s very attractive for the
IBMs, Microsofts, and Oracles — the more platform oriented players in the
market.”
IBM’s DB2 software competes with Microsoft’s own database software, as well
as number one in the industry, Oracle.
Starting later this summer, under the agreement IBM will bundle Borland
Delphi Studio Architect, Borland C++Builder Enterprise, and Borland Kylix
Enterprise 30-day trial versions with the most current versions of IBM DB2
Universal Developer’s Edition and DB2 Universal Personal Edition.
In return, Borland will bundle IBM’s DB2 Universal Developer’s Edition with
the most current versions of Borland Delphi Studio Architect and Enterprise,
Borland C++Builder Enterprise, and Borland Kylix Enterprise.
As part of the agreement, IBM and Borland will also create a portal to
assist developers interested in migrating to IBM and Borland’s
cross-platform solutions. The portal will be hosted on the IBM web site and
marketed by IBM and Borland.
Borland, which has been known for its commitment to independent development
tools, last week, struck a similar deal
with IBM competitor BEA.
BEA has taken on IBM aggressively, sending a release late last week directly
touting the advantages of its WebLogic application server over IBM’s
WebSphere.