Q: How is Borland increasing its support for Eclipse?

A: Borland will now play a leadership role in the Eclipse community and platform, rather than a supporting role. Borland was a founding member of Eclipse and many of our products already support Eclipse today. We are increasing that investment and joining the Eclipse Board of Directors as a Strategic Developer. Part of this move includes dedicating at least eight full-time developers to expand the Eclipse platform.

Also, to help drive Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) advancements within Eclipse, we will be leading a new graphical modeling framework project that will build upon, bridge and extend the existing modeling technology within the Eclipse community. Our strong expertise in modeling and our ongoing leadership in OMG's Model Driven Architecture (MDA) standards make Borland a perfect fit for this role.

Finally, we will be expanding our use of Eclipse, along with Microsoft Visual Studio, across our ALM product line.

Q: What does your increased Eclipse investment mean for existing customers? Your partners? Eclipse users?

A: Our expanded use of Eclipse across our ALM products will enable Eclipse users to take advantage of Borland's wide range of enterprise-class products on the framework of their choice. Our investment will also enable Borland customers to take advantage of the rapidly growing Eclipse ecosystem, plug-ins and future advancements on its open source projects. For Borland partners, it will provide a common integration framework to help reduce costs and speed the delivery of integrated offerings.

Q: Why are you becoming a Board member now?

A: Borland was a founding member of Eclipse and our products already support Eclipse today. However, our customers are asking for us to increase that support and our long-term commitment. Eclipse has gained a lot of traction among customers and partners alike. Plus, as we move down the path of developing our new integrated ALM platform for Software Delivery Optimization, Core SDP, we saw the value of building it out on an open framework that has broad industry support. The timing made sense. And the fact that it is no longer an IBM-controlled initiative made it a better fit with our focus on platform-neutrality and user-choice.

Q: Will Borland continue to support its JBuilder IDE?

A: Absolutely! JBuilder is still the leading commercial Java IDE in the market today, and we believe there will continue to be a strong market for commercial IDEs in the future. Eclipse offers a great base development framework on which companies like Borland can offer innovative, enterprise-strength solutions that provide value to software teams. Borland will continue to advance the features and capabilities of JBuilder.