Yeshim Blog - Tod Nielsen's New Business Card - Will Oracle Buy Borland?

I think I met Tod Nielsen some time in 2000, right after the Sun Microsoft lawsuit over Java lived through its hottest days like the OJ Simpson trial. Those must be the same days when he must have joined BEA Systems as the chief marketing officer.

I was cleaning up my business card rolodex this morning (do you think its strange to still have a rolodex? I have one :-) and you won't believe how many business cards I found in there which looked like many software company executives' business card size resume archives.

Tod's business card with the black and red BEA Systems logo and an address in Bellevue, Washington attracted my attention especially because the original title of this blog entry was supposed to be about Bill Coleman, not Tod Nielsen. I was on the phone yesterday afternoon with a firend of mine who is well plugged into the street (Wall Street). She told me the shareholders at Novell is talking to Coleman to convince him to replace Jack Messman. Supposedly Bill is going to make up his mind some time before the end of the month.

However, Messman is not willing to leave his job yet, but I think if the FEMA director was able to be persuaded, I believe someone should be able to persuade Mr. Messman, someone like David Litwack perhaps. If Coleman does not take the job, Litwack can do it.

On a fresh news announcement which came out this morning, I see Tod Nielsen joined Borland as the new president and CEO. That's great news for Borland, and my congratulations to Tod at the same time. I look forward to add his new business card in my rolodex. :-)

Now the next question coming from the spin circles is "Will Oracle buy Borland?" Similar questions were raised when IBM's WebSphere chief John Swainson joined CA as their CEO earlier this year.

All we know at this point is if there will be any acquisition conversations between Borland and Oracle, Tod will not be using his old business card I posted above. :-) Alfred Chuang is the one who still has that logo on his business card. I would love to be there for the photo opportunity if, one day, Larry, Alfred and Tod were having a relaxing weekend in Larry's new boat toy. :-)

posted Tuesday, 8 November 2005 3:55 PM EST