Borland Delphi Gets Upgrade

Delphi 7, scheduled to ship in late summer, enables Microsoft Windows developers to migrate to .Net without abandoning the Windows environment entirely, said Dale Fuller, Borland's CEO and president.

Microsoft's comprehensive .Net tool, Visual Studio .Net, requires developers to learn the new platform without leveraging Windows at all, Fuller said. "Microsoft is saying, 'Abandon [Windows. You have to start fresh,' " he said.

Lino Tadros, president and CTO of Kazoo Software, a software firm in San Jose, Calif., said Delphi 7 allows developers to create code for various Windows platforms,including 95, 98 and 2000,in addition to .Net.

Tadros added that developers also can deploy Delphi code on Linux by compiling the code in Kylix, Borland's IDE for Linux.

Delphi 7 will be available in three editions: Delphi 7 Architect is priced at $3,499, Delphi 7 Enterprise costs $2,999, and Delphi 7 Professional is $999. A personal edition also will be available for free download at www.borland.com/downloads.

Borland, which observers in 2000 said might go out of business, has since returned to profitability. "People were scared of [Borland for a long time because they thought they were going to go under," said one solution provider, who requested anonymity. "But that seems to have passed now."

Last week, Borland competitor and Java tools vendor WebGain confirmed reports it had closed its main office and was looking to sell its remaining assets. This puts Borland in a position to pick up WebGain's former customers with its JBuilder Java IDE, said John Meyer, senior industry analyst with Giga Information Group.