What a day...

Needless to say, it's been a crazy day here at CodeGear. I'm sure the same can be said of the fine folks at Embarcadero. Rather than saying the same things you can read about in all the various outlets and blogs, I figured I'd give folks my impression of how this is affecting the teams here at CodeGear.

At 9am PDT, we held a company "all-hands" meeting here in Scotts Valley, CA. Since this meeting coincided with Borland's earnings announcement, this was not an unusual event. Oh sure, the internal rumors had been flying for months. Folks kept saying that "something is happening." After the usual presentation and outline of the deal, there was an opportunity for a Q&A session with Jim Douglas, the CodeGear CEO. Jim was candid and frank. Like anything that is a major change, there is bound to be some level of nervousness. In this case, the employees were far more engaged in the meeting that I've seen in the past. It seemed that there was this collective sigh of relief among the whole crowd. We finally made it!

Michael Swindell presented information about how this is a great fit for both companies and began outlining a lot of the immediate and long term opportunities. When something fits this well, it's easy for people to just "get it." It's not a tough thing to "sell." If you're a CodeGear customer, I would encourage you to head on over to Embarcadero's site and just browse around and look at what they're offering. You should also take a moment to read this blog post from Greg Keller.

Throughout most of today, intermixed with doing a little bit of coding, I've also been cruising the newsgroups, blogosphere, and other message boards. So far the overall tone is very positive and upbeat. There are lots of questions and concerns. It's only the first day, so I'm sure as folks have a chance to digest what this all means, the real questions will start flowing. Off the top, right now there are no plans to veer from our current roadmaps or to interrupt any current schedules. As a matter of fact, this was the directive given from the Embarcadero folks to make sure we're still on track to deliver what we've committed to.

I also spent some time roaming through the halls here in Scotts Valley.  After the 9am meeting, there was a lot of hallway conversations about what this all means. There was no "hand-wringing" and "angst" among the team that I could see. In fact, most folks were already talking about what Embarcadero does, the products they offer, and how they fit with what we're doing. Those are exactly the conversations we should be having internally. By the afternoon, most of the team had settled back into their routine and the development engine was back running on all cylinders.

So if you have any questions or comments, feel free to let me know and post through the comment system here. As I already stated above, it is business as usual in terms of products, schedules and features. As we approach the final close of this deal, more and more information will become available. So if I cannot answer your question right away, I hope to be able to do so in the coming weeks.

UPDATE: It seems that many of you are already hitting Embarcadero's site.  It appears to be suffering from a mild case of "slashdot effect". This is a good thing. Let's make sure they know how engaged, passionate, and committed the CodeGear customers are.