ECO, Delphi, CapableObjects, and the Future
09 Jul
I published this article this morning on CDN — CodeGear and CapableObjects Collaborate to Take ECO into the Future. It talks about the changes going on with the ECO team — changes that will be good for Delphi and good for ECO.
The ECO team has formed a new business called CapableObjects. They have licensed the ECO technology from us, and are going to be taking it forward, separate from us. Now, this may cause some concern for some customers, so here are some facts:
- For Delphi customers, this should not be any big change at all. Should be a seamless, “business as usual“ transition.
- The decision to make this move was a mutual one, agreed to by all concerned parties as the best course of action for our ECO customers.
- ECO remains a critical, key, and important part of Delphi. ECO is, and will continue to be for a long time to come, an integral part of CodeGear RAD Studio.
- The ECO team is completely dedicated to growing and improving the product, and expanding ECO into new markets. Those new markets will almost certainly include IDEs besides CodeGear’s Galileo IDE.
- CapableObjects and CodeGear remain very close partners with strong mutual interests.
- The CapableObjects guys are very smart, interesting, nice guys who develop terrific products
All in all, we are excited about this move — giving ECO “room to breathe” and to move into new areas is a win for all concerned: ECO can gain a wider audience and our customers can continue to take advantage of ECO’s powerful productivity gains.
Have you tried ECO yet?
You guys start making more and more sense all the time. I have always found it puzzling that ECO was not available for Visual Studio. Visual Basic / C# type coders are much more likely to find additional value in balloon drawing tools than the no-nonsense native Delphi coders. Plus that market is like a gazillion times bigger.
One almost starts to wonder what happened to all those "give a moose a muffin" managers who ran Borland for the last few years without being bothered by trivial issues like common sense.
If you guys keep this up we (the non USA-ers) might even be able to buy Delphi directly from the CodeGear. Or product activation will stop frustrating the paying customers…
Anyway, congratulations on a sound business decision.
July 9th, 2007 at 1:03 pmGreat news.The first thing that I would expect from CapableObjects would be to release real good documentation & not buy from others like in the past(though Alois Schmidt did a great job.Thanks Alois).
July 10th, 2007 at 12:18 amI always felt that ECO team was not being given its due importance.
Now CodeGear has done the right thing
I also wish CapableOBjecr release ECO for win32 also
All the best to CapableObjects.
I will be seeing their web site every day
Vrey bad move. A spin-off from a spin-off.
July 10th, 2007 at 12:43 amIf you lose any advantage over competition, why people should choose Delphi over Visual Studio? Just because it’s Pascal? <g>
You’ve just hinted all of your partners that it’s better to move their products to Java or VS. Cool! <G>
Moreover, I am afraid it will make more people worried about CodeGear future, as you lose more and more pieces along the road.
And just wait for MS buying CapableObjects… <G>
Excellent.
July 10th, 2007 at 2:58 amNow we wont have to use Delphi to access Eco any more and can use just Visual Studio.
Second ECO for Win32
July 10th, 2007 at 3:29 amFinally!
Now ECO will have the chance to develop to an own product with an own update cycle. Changes can be included without waiting for a Delphi update.
AND VERY IMPORTANT: ECO can be brought into the wide world of VS developers. Very good decision.
We’ve awaited it. ECO is too cool to be only a feature within Delphi.
July 10th, 2007 at 3:30 amFrankly, I can’t understand all these "hoorays" for ECO going VS. It could be great for ECO itself, but it will mean also less and less people will use Delphi, or think to use it - where’s the gain - unless one has planned to move to VS alredy?
July 10th, 2007 at 4:06 amAnd IMHO, a very silly move from a company who couldn’t support Windows Mobile because they weren’t able to license its surface designer - MS knows very well how to stop competitors in areas where they don’t want them.
At this point C. Johnson was almost right, Codegear should become a VS plug-in vendor, what’s the advantage of not using VS if any good technology is available for VS, while many are still missing in Delphi?
Did you get a kamikaze as business consultant????
I wish all my competitors would be like CodeGear…
Well, this appears to be the beginning of the firesale. I suppose next we’ll see interbase spun out into its own company yet again (like a big software yo-yo).
It will be interesting to see how this progresses.
The only clear upside I can see here is that this will help more clearly define the value of the Delphi product line to make it easier to agree on its value at sale.
Personally, after getting caught in the VCL db aware components trap, I’m not really thrilled about more database linkage deadends - just give me reasonable low level access and let me handle the UI myself (display only components work ok, but once you get to editing - oy!) I suppose because of my point of view, I never really saw the point/value of ECO (most of the demos failed to impress me either, esp. the web based ones), so I guess I welcome peeling ECO off to live or die on its own merits.
July 10th, 2007 at 4:39 amIs G framework from Google to replace ECO?
July 11th, 2007 at 9:21 pmG is a framework built by Steve Kramer. It’s not replacing anything.
July 12th, 2007 at 10:17 amI personally view this as yet another failure of Borland turned CodeGear to capitalize on its assets.
It’s no wonder the ECO Team wanted to be off on its own. They believe in their product and want it marketed properly. CodeGear has not changed their marketing inherited from Borland.
Now what incentive do I have to buy Delphi Architect? So I can have a subset of the CapableObjects framework that won’t be as well supported? This move doesn’t make any sense to me. What would have been impressive is to see a subset of ECO targeting VS.NET to lure .NET developers over to Delphi, and some real marketing and documentation for ECO under the CodeGear banner. To me, that would have shown a company changed for the better.
July 14th, 2007 at 5:01 pmLarry –
Your comments are totally off base.
1. The decision to start CapableObjects was a mutually agreed decision. No one is "trying to get away" from anyone. It’s false to assert otherwise.
2. Delphi Architect will have the /full/ version of ECO. It’s false to assert that Delphi Architect will have a subset of ECO.
Just to clear things up.
Nick
July 16th, 2007 at 10:07 amNick,
I have since learned that CodeGear still owns CapableObjects. My assumption was that the ECO team had formed a second independant company. This definitely puts a different light on things….glad to hear it, although I don’t see the benefit of spinning off a seperate company, and I noticed you avoided commenting on my take on CodeGear’s marketing :>)
July 28th, 2007 at 12:22 pmLarry —
I’m not sure where you heard that CodeGear owns CapableObjects, but it’s not true.
Nick
July 30th, 2007 at 8:39 am