Borland shakeup was imperative: president

By ADAM GIFFORD

Dale Fuller has no apologies for the changes he has wreaked since becoming president and chief executive of software tool-maker Borland two years ago, which started with the dumping of the Inprise name.

"Sometimes you have to cover up the sins of your forefathers," he said.

"Any time you take a well-entrenched brand like Borland and bury it without fixing its problems, it's a costly mistake."

Those problems included poor direction and poor management.

As well as its Delphi product, which developers use to write applications to run on the Windows operating system, Borland also makes the Java development tool JBuilder, C++ Builder and Linux tool Kylix.

Mr Fuller said a growing number of companies needed Unix-level performance as they shifted to e-commerce, and they had given up waiting for Microsoft to deliver it.

"We all in the marketplace have grown used to what Windows NT can deliver, and we work around it. If NT was delivering on its promise, there would be no need for Linux."

Mr Fuller was also responsible from pulling the plug on a proposed merger with Canadian desktop software company Corel.

"Corel couldn't execute their business process. They were not making the changes they needed to make to address the fundamental problems in their organisation," he said.

Last year Borland made $US20.2 million ($49.7 million), its biggest profit for nine years.

Mr Fuller said that while Borland was not immune to the economic downturn, it was in a better position than other software companies.

Apart from software development tools, Borland has a range of middleware solutions that allow companies to tie applications together. It also owns one of the three leading application servers.

Borland also had a long patent fight with Microsoft. This ended in 1999 when Microsoft paid Borland $US100 million for the right to use certain technologies and $US25 million to buy shares.

Resolving the festering row with Microsoft was one of Mr Fuller's first jobs.

He was Downunder to open Borland's new Asia-Pacific headquarters in Sydney. Andrew Munro was named manager for Australia and New Zealand.

Mr Fuller said the intention was not to run everything from across the Tasman.

"New Zealand customers have also told us the marketplace is significantly different."