BorlandTalk.com

Richard Grossman · Guest

So there's no roadmap, for whatever reason.

So who cares? The roadmap is just a curiosity, at least from the point
of view of whether my use of Delphi would be greater or less based on
the existence of a roadmap.

A roadmap could be said to have various purposes, but to be cold-blooded
and analytic about it, let's skip the part about helping customers, etc.

One could say the purpose of a roadmap is to accomplish the following
from a marketing and sales perspective:

In the face of competitors either announcing upcoming features (and
support for new technologies) that the company's product(s) don't have,
or where other competitors actually are releasing such competing
products, then the purpose of a roadmap is to keep current users from
defecting.

Given that, then were is Delphi now?

1
The majority of those who really care primarily about fast adoption of
new .Net technologies has already switched.

2
The majority of those who's business requires them to promise support
for new technologies like .Net 2.0 has also switched or partially switched.

3
The majority of those with big source-code and wetware knowledge-bases
based on Delphi have stayed.

Regarding category 3, the "embedded" users of Delphi, I would make the
following points:

A) This category will stay as long as the strategy is viable, ie it
remains cheaper, easier, and faster to remain with existing invested
Delphi technology.

B) This category can always begin to develop on both Delphi and VS
platforms, but that still keeps them continuing-purchasing customers of
Delphi.

C) Speculation about what *could* (not what *will*) bring this
category's use of Delphi to an end:

1- Lack of support for basic run functionality on a new Microsoft platform.

2- Severe breaks on a new Microsoft platform.

3- Overwhelming advantage of a new competitor (ie a future VS) that
makes it easier, cheaper, and faster to abandon the invested codebase
and move to the new competing tool than to continue to workaround the
deficiencies of the old tool.

All 3 of these, in my opinion, are years away. Items 1 & 2 are unlikely
before 2012.

Item 3 is not so predictable. One speculation would be that an upgrade
of VS makes browser-based programming as simple, manageable, and
interface-rich as the current Windows-environment, and for some
currently-unknown reason, Delphi is unable to support that.

Another speculation, more to the point, is that a new technology comes
along that at the same time presents an irresistible value proposition
to programmers nd users, yet requires an investment so large that
Borland cannot follow given its market-size and requirement to make a
profit on its products.

There is another possiblity, whether likely or not, and that is that
Microsoft's new technology will make it so easy (once again) for Borland
to offer a value-added variant of it in the Delphi market, that Delphi
will have a resurgence among the remaining user-base.

-end-

Richard Grossman · Guest

GrandmasterB wrote:

Richard Grossman · Guest

David Ninnes wrote:

Richard Grossman · Guest

Bruce McGee wrote:

Richard Grossman · Guest

David Ninnes wrote:

David Ninnes · Guest

Richard Grossman wrote:

Richard Grossman · Guest

By the way, the best "roadmap" in terms of what *possibilities* Borland
is thinking about has always been the questions on the surveys.

Robin · Guest

DerekUK wrote:

Robin · Guest

Chris Burrows wrote:

DerekUK · Guest

On May 7, 5:34 am, "Chris Burrows" <cfbsoftw...@hotmail.com> wrote:

Chris Burrows · Guest

"Robin" <Robin@.com> wrote in message
news:463ea37d$1 (AT) newsgroups (DOT) borland.com...

Robin · Guest

DerekUK wrote:

DerekUK · Guest

On May 7, 6:04 am, Robin <Robin@.com> wrote: