Happy birthday, CodeGear

It wasn’t the easiest of births, but this week, CodeGear — the tools division of Borland — turned one year old. Borland had been flailing around. One minute their execs were saying that tools were important, the next minute they were irrelevant. One day they were spinning off their tools because they were a distraction, and the next day, they were instead creating a wholly owned subsidiary.

It all settled down on Nov. 14, 2006, when Borland issued a press release discussing their plans, spinning out a subsidiary to be led by Ben Smith. Ben only lasted five months. A few weeks ago I had lunch with his successor, CodeGear CEO Jim Douglas. I think that Jim (pictured) has a very clear idea of what CodeGear needs to do to thrive and survive in today’s very competitive IDE market.

My consistent question, of course, is how much can CodeGear do as a wholly owned subsidary of ALM-centric Borland. As long as Borland is dong well, CodeGear will have lots of flexibility for investment and R&D. However, if Borland’s ALM business runs into hard times, CodeGear may be squeezed. That wouldn’t be good for products like Delphi, which have little synergy with Borland’s ALM suites, or with low-margin product lines like CodeGear’s 3rdRail tools for Ruby.

Marco Cantu, a noted luminary in the Delphi world, wrote a good blog entry about the first anniversary of CodeGear. I enjoyed his impressions of the progression from Borland to CodeGear.