Just a quick little note about the DevCo spin-off. Borland is still in a "quiet period" before any announcements regarding a buyer can be made. However, in lieu of that, and since we just finished Q2 the business functioning and moving ahead. The good thing is that as more time passes, the Developer Tools Group (aka. DevCo) is operating more and more as an independent entity. Only not as independent as if we're a separate company since our revenue is on Borland's P&L statements. We are still responsible to Borland. For instance, we just held the first Developer Tools Group operations meeting with Tod Nielsen this morning. This was a chance to have all the heads of the different regions (Americas, EMEA, APAC) present their recap of Q2 results and present their plan and forecasts for Q3 (NO, I can't tell you that information... The SEC really frowns on doing that kind of thing ;-). I must say it was abundantly clear that all the region managers are excited and pumped up about the spin-off. Some of you may know of or have met some of these folks, most notably Jason Vokes and Malcolm Groves. I always look forward to them coming into town and hearing all the great stories about how things are out in the field. This time was no exception.
Next week we'll be spending several days in intense on/off-site meetings among the whole extended DevCo leadership team. This will be the first time we've all gotten together to really lay down our own plans and to map out our own destiny. One key element that we're going to be covering is getting down to the finer details of executing a, get this, Marketing Plan! Yes, folks there's some cool things surrounding some of the products that are coming. The product road maps are published and we're proceeding full speed ahead and executing on them.
While we're being very quiet about the spin-off status, rest assured that we're making, and will be making, plenty of noise in other areas.
Any thoughts on whether you can apply the hot patches to D2K6 trial? In particular, hot patch 5. I would like to re-evaluate it with hot patch 5, but I would HATE to waste all that bandwidth to find out that you can't apply hotpatches to the trial version.
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry, but I don't understand the "quiet period" stuff. Admittedly, I've never worked in a public company, and hope I never will. However, I always thought that the "quiet period" had to do with the time between the printing of a prospectus prior to IPO (or a new stock release) and the actual stock sale. Perhaps you're going to spin-off DevCo into a separate public company? If so, have you release the prospectus? If not, could you please take a moment and further explain the situation?
ReplyDeletePhil,
ReplyDelete"Quier period" is simply a self-imposed moratorium on being too loose with informatio that is material to the divestiture. Since Borland is a public company certain SEC rules still apply. We also do not want to run the chance that some seemingly innocuous bit of information jeopordize the whole deal. Just like when you buy or sell a home, you don't broadcast every little bit of information. Especially things like what you're willing spend or what you're willing to sell for. Blogs and other forms of communication are very public and we're not just talking privately to a select few. It's like trying to have a private conversation in a crowded resturant. You never know who's listening. When the time is right and all the critical details of the deal are worked out, you can rest assured that we'll be very public about the deal.
Phil -> They keep quiet while closing a deal to keep from killing the stock price, or even worse, driving it through the roof. Either one could queer the deal and prevent any alternate deal from happening.
ReplyDelete