BANGALORE: Borland has struck a joint marketing alliance with global consulting major, Accenture. Borland believes that this is just beginning of bigger things to come. "We see the outsourcing boom as a growing opportunity for us", says Nick Jackson, Director of Business Development and Product Solutions, A-PAC, for Borland. "As for other partnerships, we have forged an alliance with Nokia for mobile application development. We also will have tie-ups with more mobile emulator makers, such as Zentek in Japan", he says.

Borland, with its JBuilder, is currently the leader of the Java tools market. What is the company’s take on free software tools such as IBM’s eclipse? "IBM’s free tool is a trap. It is just IBM’s way of eventually locking people into using Websphere. We have no such hidden agenda. That is why we are the most trusted name when it comes to application development", says Jackson. "Free software comes with its own problems. Companies have now realized that they cannot afford free software. " says Jackson.

Borland is taking partnerships with the software giants very seriously. Earlier, while delivering the keynote at the Borland India Developer Conference, Nick Jackson highlighted the fact that Borland has received support from both Sun and Microsoft. Borland has partnerships with most of the big names in the industry, including competitor IBM.

"J2EE is a more mature and robust technology and is gaining tremendous strength. I see more of J2EE on the backend and .Net on the client-end." This is where Borland hopes to come in, with its Janeva tool, which is a Java-.Net connector. The next big thing according to Borland is "Java-.Net connectivity and mobile application development", says Jackson.