Delphi Goes to School in Russia
Michael Desmond, founding editor of Redmond Developer News and Desmond
File blogger, is on vacation. Filling in for him today is Kathleen Richards,
senior editor of RDN. You can reach her at [email protected].
Microsoft isn't the only company that's trying to get
students on board early. In early February, Borland's developer tools subsidiary
CodeGear announced a sizable
licensing agreement for the Eastern bloc. The company joins Corel and other
as yet unannounced vendors in a deal with the Russian Federal Agency of Education
to provide technology and other resources to teach programming in primary and
secondary schools.
"It's a forward-looking investment by a government looking to build the
next generation of technologists in the country," said Jim Douglas, chief
executive officer of CodeGear, who has just returned from a trip to Moscow and
St. Petersburg where his company has a development office. The Russian education
program is targeted at students between the ages of 7 to 17 years old.
The up to 1 million-seat licensing agreement involves Borland's flagship rapid-application
development environments: the Windows-based Delphi, Delphi for .NET and C++
Builder. "It's a combination of some older versions and newer versions.
They are also using some Pascal products," Douglas said.
Forrester Research senior analyst Jeffrey Hammond views CodeGear's recent announcement
in the same light as any large enterprise agreement. "It's a good first
step," he said, "but to capitalize on it Borland (or an integration
partner) and the Russian education system needs to have an aggressive roll-out
plan to make sure the copies actually get into the hands of the target users
and put into active use.
"It will take some time to do that, and only after that effort will we
be able to really judge the impact of the deal," Hammond added.
Right now, CodeGear doesn't have similar agreements in place with any other
educational systems. "Education is a significant part of our story around
these technologies," Douglas said. "It is something that I am personally
trying to re-inject into our company, into our culture and into our focus. But
we are certainly not on the doorstep of doing anything this major anywhere else."
What do you think about putting development tools into the hands of primary,
secondary and college kids around the world? Will early education better prepare
the future workforce? Send your comments, rants or better ideas to [email protected].
--Kathleen Richards
Posted on 02/21/2008