Newsmaker: Borland's latest savior

In the course of its 22 years in Silicon Valley, Borland Software has lived through its share of ups and downs.

The company announced on Tuesday that Tod Nielsen, a seasoned technology executive, will take over as president and CEO, replacing Dale Fuller, who left in July.

Nielsen knows Borland's developer audience well: He spent 12 years working on development products at Microsoft and was chief marketing officer at BEA Systems before working briefly as a senior vice president at Oracle.

But Nielsen will need a good amount of acumen to get Borland on a consistent revenue growth track. Fuller stepped down after poor second-quarter results, which were followed by a disappointing third quarter.

Borland has seen several shifts in strategic direction over the years, but Nielsen says its current path is a good one. Rather than rely on sales of standalone development tools, the company's strategy of application life cycle management embraces all phases of the development process, from gathering application requirements to testing.

After delivering the keynote at Borland's developer conference last week, Nielsen spoke to CNET News.com about the company's future.

Q: Why did you come over to Borland from Oracle?

I was talking to a friend and mentor of mine and asked what he thought about me taking this job. And he said, "You know Tod, the great thing about Borland is everybody wants Borland to win." There's still this place in our heart where the industry wants Borland to succeed.

Nielsen: I've known that the next kind of career step is or has been to lead a public software company. When I was approached with the opportunity at Borland, it just sort of brought (together) everything in my career. This is the logical next step. It's a company that's been focused on developers, good partnerships, great quality, innovative products, and they're looking for someone like me that can help lead them and take them to the next level. And I said, "Gosh, this is an opportunity I can't pass up."

The last two financial quarters were disappointing. Over the years there have been a few restructurings to get the company growing. What are you going to do to break out of that and get the company on a steady growth track?
Nielsen: Any time a company goes through a product line transition or focuses on new opportunities, there's going to be...bumps in the road. And one of the things I hope to do is really provide the vision, the clear focus and the ability to make decisions and say, "This is what we believe the future to be." We're betting on application life cycle management or software delivery optimization, and that's going to be the space where customers want us to be leaders, and we're going to make sure that we deliver the products and services that will help us succeed there.

Looking at the company from the outside, is there anything there that concerns you? Do you think you need to do something different either operationally or strategywise?
Nielsen: Borland needs to clearly articulate what we're doing today and our vision going forward. Everybody has the positive association with the word "Borland" and the company. But not a lot of people are up to speed on what is the current strategy, what is our mission, what is our vision for the future. I hope to be able to scream from the mountain tops and clearly articulate what it is we're doing and take that positive association people have with our brand and help them understand our vision.

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[stevemur]

Good luck, Tod!

Tod, if you read this, all of us who worked for you more than a decade ago on the Cirrus (Access) team at Microsoft wish you all the best. Maybe bring in AdamB or BradSi as CTO? You could "put the band back together" so to speak. I know he used to work at Borland long ago, and I hear he's now at some company named "goo"-something; I don't know if that's going to go anywhere :-).

Man, it seems like only yesterday that we were working feverishly to pull together that head-to-head Access vs. Paradox presentation together for Demo 93. Borland is lucky to have you aboard; your passion, sense of humor and intelligence and strong leadership will always be fondly remembered. Tell Philippe we said hi.

- Steve