Delphi has to change the club again.

A few days ago to hear this news, make a FMX out, 64 have not yet figured out, and began to toss! http://www.deltics.co.nz/blog/posts/2371

No Seriously–let ' s Buy Embarcadero

Sep in Delphi | comments

Peter Dunne posted a suggestion in the Delphi Developer group on Facebookthat a Kickstarter project could being started to Fu nd the acquisition of Delphi by the community itself (assuming that Embarcadero or Idera put it up for sale, of course). How realistic are this?

Numerous people has chipped in with "calculations" to determine the level of investment needed by a given number of Backe Rs of such a project and a strange sense of purpose seems to has descended on the resulting exchange of more or less Rand Om numbers that this exercise have produced, ranging from as little as $ $4,000.

As attractive as this might sound (to paraphrase: for the price of a license each, we could acquire the whole business ), I hate to cast a shade of reality over this little fantasy but it's not just a question of the purchase price. There is also the small matter of funding the on-going business once it had been acquired because it seems unlikely that I T is self-sustaining in its own.

OSS vs BAU

Even if the plan were to turn the whole enterprise through to a community supported, open source project, there would almost Certainly is wind-up costs to deal with, not least in cleaning up legal issues around licensed technology in the tools (WH Ich could easily thwart any OSS ambitions entirely) and of course then laying off the entire current work-force.

Or Perhaps we would just turn the enterprise into a community owned co-operative, running it as an on-going business?

Of course, being a private company we had no real idea of the true financial health of the dev tools business and to what Extent it is perhaps propped up by the DB tools side of things. But we did have a number of available indicators we can consider.

First of all, it's widely known, the sale of the dev tools business to Embarcadero were valued at around $25-30 Millio N at the time. We also know that the Idera acquisition of the entire Embarcadero Technologies business are being bankrolled to the tune of $425 million. Even allowing for (IMHO) Borland has sold the tools short or an optimistic assessment that Embarcadero has overseen a Doubling of value of the dev tools business, this means, the entire dev tools business accounts for perhaps $ millio N of an anticipated $425 million valuation. That's just 14% of the business.

So why commercial value does that 14% represent?

Has I Got a Deal for you!

Well the never-ending "special offers" (no special when they run more or less continuously), changes to upgrade pricin G Criteria (the limit on upgrade pricing to the 2 previous versions have now been lifted) and continual waving of big stick s to coerce if isn't force subscription uptake ... all of the does not exactly indicate a business that's doing well.

Without the numbers it is a course impossible to say in sure, but whilst there was businesses where the underlying comme Rcial model is one of the perpetual sales, special deals and sharp practice, the is not typically a feature ofprofitable< /c0> technology businesses and certainly not of tools vendors.

Even within Embarcadero It's interesting to note that the DB tools does not seem to being subject to the same sort of aggressi ve discounting, dealing, bundling and license tweaking that the dev tools be, so this practice w.r.t the dev tools was not Simply a consistent part of a strategy adopted across the Embarcadero business as a whole.

It seems to me, any purchase of the "Dev tools business is likely" to being more akin to the purchase of a house with a mor Tgage:an Initial exchange of funds to secure the "change in title" But with an on-going and potentially much larger financi Al commitment attached.

Mortgagee sales occur when on-going commitments can no longer is met, not in the day of initial purchase.

A potential new/old Home for Delphi

Of course, if all this are accurate, then there remains the question of what Idera might does with the dev tools business if They is interested only in acquiring, the seemingly more profitable DB tools. It certainly does not seem to being the sort of business interested in branching out into development tools.

If They has no appetite for continuing to financially, the dev tools they might choose to sell them off much more Cheaply which might make it a attractive proposition for some of the larger ALM tools vendors, especially those operating In the legacy space rather than fighting it off on the cutting edge.

In other words, it's exactly the sort of business this might be of interest tomicro Focus.

Delphi has to change the club again.