Definition: Borland

(Borland Software Corporation, Austin, TX) A software company founded as Borland International in 1983 by Philippe Kahn, who resigned as president in 1995 but remained as chairman. Borland was acquired by Micro Focus International in 2009 and OpenText in 2023. The company is noted for its language and development products. It also popularized the DOS desktop accessory with its Sidekick program. Borland's Turbo Pascal moved Pascal out of the academic halls into a commercial product, and its Turbo C became an industry standard. Borland C++ and Delphi were widely used for developing Windows applications, and its JBuilder Java environment was very popular.

The company acquired the Paradox database from Ansa Software in 1987 in addition to dBASE and Interbase from Ashton-Tate in 1991. It made Borland the leader in PC databases in the early 1990s. It later sold Paradox to Corel and spun off Delphi, JBuilder and Interbase into the CodeGear division.

In 1998, Borland changed its name to Inprise Corporation in recognition of its focus on "integrating the enterprise" but changed it back to Borland three years later. See Turbo C, Borland C++, dBASE Plus, Interbase, JBuilder, Paradox and Delphi.

Philippe Kahn

Borland's founder was a notable personality in the early days of personal computing and led the company into some very successful ventures. (Image courtesy of Borland Software Corporation.)