Inprise/Borland offers Visual Basic developers fast path to Linux

The familiar visual development and cross-platform capabilities of Inprise/Borland's Delphi give Visual Basic developers entry to exploding Linux market.

SCOTTS VALLEY, Calif., June 21 -- Inprise/Borland today announced a solution which gives Visual Basic developers worldwide an entry into the exploding Linux market by taking advantage of the cross-platform capabilities of Borland Delphi. Responding to a strong demand by Microsoft Visual Basic developers to gain Linux development capabilities, as shown in a recent independent survey, Inprise/Borland is launching an aggressive worldwide awareness campaign, including seminars, direct mail, electronic and print advertising, and special offers. The campaign will focus on showing Visual Basic developers how Delphi can be used to create applications on Windows and port those applications to Linux.

"With the release of Delphi for Linux (Kylix) later this year, Delphi will be the only native visual RAD tool that supports cross-platform Windows and Linux development," said Ben Riga, director of product management, Inprise/Borland. "Delphi has always had strong support for Windows and developers using Delphi today are also on a fast path to Linux."

"There are strong similarities between the Delphi and Visual Basic application development environments for Windows. Visual Basic developers will feel very comfortable developing in Delphi," said Steve Garone, vice president at International Data Corporation. "This solution will be attractive to the approximately 7.5 million Visual Basic developers worldwide in 2000."

Evans Marketing, an independent research firm providing market research focused on the software development community, polled 468 Visual Basic developers worldwide regarding Linux development and other topics. The results indicated that 36 percent of Visual Basic developers in North America and 53 percent outside of North America are interested in creating Linux applications in 2000. Please visit www.evansmarketing.com for more information.

About the Campaign

Inprise/Borland is hosting a series of seminars worldwide to explain to Visual Basic developers what the company is doing to make it easy for them to develop for Linux, as well as for Windows. The U.S. seminars are being held in San Mateo, Calif., on June 22 and Princeton, New Jersey, on June 21. The European seminars are scheduled to begin in early summer, and in India later in the summer. For more information, please visit www.borland.com/vb.

About Delphi and Kylix

Borland Delphi is Inprise/Borland's rapid application development tool for Windows. Designed to help individual and corporate developers rapidly deliver Windows applications, as well as extend those applications to the Internet, Delphi radically simplifies the integration of Windows and browser clients, web servers, middleware and back-end database systems. Inprise/Borland is currently developing its Delphi for Linux product through its Kylix project. The Kylix project is a component-based development environment for two-way visual development of GUI (graphical user interface), Internet, database and server applications. Kylix will be powered by a new high-speed native Delphi/C/C++ compiler for Linux and will implement a native Linux version of the Borland VCL (Visual Component Library) architecture. The Borland VCL for Linux is designed to radically speed native Linux application development and simplify the porting of Delphi and C++Builder applications between Windows and Linux.

About Inprise/Borland Corporation

Inprise/Borland is a leading provider of Internet access infrastructure and application development tools and services for all major platforms, including Linux, Solaris and Windows. Founded in 1983, Inprise/Borland is headquartered in the Silicon Valley, California, with operations worldwide. To learn more, visit Inprise/Borland at www.borland.com, the community site at community.borland.com or call the company at 800-632-2864.

NOTE: Inprise product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of Inprise Corporation. Other names mentioned herein may be trademarks of the party using such names. Forward-looking statements in this release, including but not limited to, those concerning Inprise's future financial performance, product development plans, and the potential features of or benefits to be derived from the Company's products, involve a number of uncertainties and risks, and actual events or results may differ materially. Factors that could cause actual events or results to differ materially include, among others, the following: possible disruptive effects of organizational or personnel changes by the Company, shifts in customer demand, market acceptance of the Company's new or enhanced products, delays in scheduled product availability dates, actions or announcements by competitors, software errors, general business conditions and market growth rates in the client/server and Internet software markets, and other factors described in the Company's S.E.C. reports on Forms 10-K and 10-Q.