InformationWeek
Defining The Business Value Of Technology
By Rich Levin
Borland, Borland Bo Borland
Inprise, Inprise Bo Binprise
(With apologies to Shirley Ellis, who voiced the tune in the 1964 Congress
label hit.)
It's been a little over two and a half weeks since Borland T-shirts entered the realm
of high-tech collectibles, right up there with Franklin Computer coffee
mugs ("Play with a Full Deck"), MS OS/2 duffel bags ("Warning: This bag
contains strong language"), and stainless steel Java rings.
No collection is complete without these items, and I've asked my friends at
Borland, er, Inprise to hit the warehouse and send me a few mint edition
T-shirts to round out my in-house museum of high-technology marketing
missteps.
For those of you who were out of the galaxy on April 29, that's the day Borland International CEO
Del Yocam issued a proclamation that the Borland moniker was officially retired.
In a final act designed to illustrate the company's total departure from
Borland's desktop computing legacy, from that day forward, Borland
International would be known as ... (trumpets, please) ... Inprise
Corporation.
Thud. In an attempt to give the announcement substance, company
officials fired up their technology teapot, and whistled vaporous promises
about some new enterprise application server that was alternately
positioned as a product, a collection of products, and "not a product, but
more of a direction." Yet, the not-a-product has a product name, the Inprise
Application Server.
The company then rehashed, in painful detail, the same corporate strategy briefing it's been
hawking for two years. I call it Yocam's "we're not the same old Borland" pitch, which hangs its
hat on Java, Corba, Entera middleware, open systems support, and "consecutive
quarters of operating profits."
Yet the strategy revolves around Borland's, er, Inprise's best-of-breed developers' tools, for
which "not the same old Borland" was known, and all
of which run exclusively on not-so-open Microsoft Windows OSes.
In one misguided swoop, Yocam & Co. tossed 15 years of global brand equity
out the window. Instead of continuing to leverage Borland's reputation for
high-performance, quality RAD tools that developers will tell you handily beat anything
Microsoft or anyone else has to offer, they threw the baby out with the bath water.
The company's upper management is clearly convinced that a new name, new
logo, and new marketing vapor could achieve what buying Entera, buying
Visigenic, and committing to Java and open standards couldn't do: catapult
Borland into a leading enterprise player.
Frankly, I can't help believing Borland, er, Inprise would have achieved
greater enterprise recognition and subsequent penetration had it
dispensed with the ridiculous name change, and instead gone straight to that day's subsequent
announcement of
its new professional services organization. That announcement alone had legs, would have gone
over well with
IT leaders, and been perceived as the firm's latest smart enterprise move.
Follow that with a tangible announcement touting the upcoming application
server, including a clear delivery road map, which itself could have been
marketed by a new enterprise division called -- you guessed it -- Inprise,
and you have the makings of a sensible enterprise marketing play that could
be rejiggered or abandoned if it fails to fly.
Right now, all enterprise decision makers have is the same old "new"
Borland, with the same products, the same strategies, the same management
team, and a new, infinitely forgettable company name. Oh yeah, and a new
professional services organization. Almost forgot.
Borland, er, Inprise isn't alone in playing this high-technology marketing
shell game. Microsoft is doing it with COM+, which has moved from an object
model upgrade to a code name to an MTS update to, now, the "next generation
of Windows NT services."
Oracle played the name game to the tune of Sedona, a project code name that was repositioned a
dozen times before it was finally killed after two years. Not to mention Oracle's
redefinition of "NC" as "any computer that runs a Web browser." And IBM is
a master of birthing buzz words in lieu of serviceable enterprise
deliverables. (Can you say "Workplace Shell" or "San Francisco"? Sure you can.)
But Borland, er, Inprise has taken it to a new level. Officials liked the name
game so much, they changed the company. Now the company's Web site herald's
"Borland + Visigenic = Inprise, the leader in enterprise computing." Sorry,
but it will take a lot more than a new name, new logo, and a few
quarters of "operating profits" to get there.
Banana, Fanna Fo Forland
Fe, Fi Mo Morland
Inprise?
Banana, Fanna Fo Finprise
Fe, Fi Mo Minprise
Borland!
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