Borland Making Moves Into .Net

Borland, which expects to ship a "pure" .Net development environment in the first half of 2003, last week said it plans to buy Sweden-based BoldSoft and Santa Ana, Calif. -based StarBase.

The Scotts Valley, Calif., vendor plans to offer a migration path to .Net for its Windows developers using Delphi as well as a series of .Net developer tools. Borland's Delphi 7 Studio includes preview capabilities for the .Net Framework.

The assets acquired from BoldSoft, including the design-driven development features that accelerate the process of transforming models of business processes

into .Net applications, will be included in future Borland products.

Borland also said it will integrate StarBase's StarTeam configuration management, version control and tracking features as well as the Caliber requirement management technology into future development tools.

"In the next year, Borland will be bringing out other products to support the .Net platform, not just Delphi," said Simon Thornhill, vice president and general manager at Borland.

Microsoft also expects to ship an update of Visual Studio.Net, code-named Everett, which will be synchronized with the forthcoming Windows.Net 2003 Server, scheduled to ship in early 2003.

Following that, Microsoft plans a "Whidbey" release of Visual Studio.Net for Microsoft's Yukon wave of products in 2004 and another release, code-named Avallon, scheduled for late 2004 or early 2005 to coincide with the release of the Longhorn version of Windows.

One programmer says he intends to stick with Visual Studio.Net but he welcomes third-party ISVs to the .Net market. "This is tangible proof that the .Net Framework is constructed in a modular way, so that people are not locked into a particular tool," said Andrew Brust, president of Progressive Systems Consulting in New York. "Tools that have other capabilities and a loyal following but still tap into .Net are a great way to create even more momentum around the platform."