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Borland Software Corp.s chief technology officer is calling it quits after five years with the company.
Patrick Kerpan, Borlands CTO since early last year, said he is leaving the software ALM (application lifecycle management) tools maker to take “time to look into a few other things.”
According to Kerpan, those other things could include starting a new venture or getting involved at the ground floor level of a startup.
“I like that entrepreneurial feel,” he said. “You wont see me popping up week after next at the competition,” he added.
Kerpan joined Cupertino, Calif.-based Borland in 2000 when Borland acquired the company he founded, Bedouin Inc., a 12-person Chicago-based maker of software for team coordination, time tracking and other features. Borland acquired Bedouin and built its Borland Developer Services group around it.
“We were doing project portfolio management, and that became the beginnings of the ALM business at Borland,” Kerpan said. “The StarTeam acquisition came after that and we were on our way.”
Borland has not named a successor for Kerpan, although he informed the company of his plans a few months ago and the company has been working on a transition from having Kerpan in the role of CTO to an office that monitors the companys technology vision by committee, said Rick Jackson, Borlands chief marketing officer.
Kerpan said one of his first jobs was to help establish an Office of the Chief Scientist within the company. The company has seven chief scientists for the various technology groups at Borland.
“Ive been a lens through which we can focus other peoples great ideas,” Kerpan said.
Both Kerpan and Jackson said Borland is set to continue to deliver on its Software Delivery Optimization strategy and to continue to build tools that make it easier for developers to build, deploy and maintain applications.
Kerpan also led Borland into greater participation in the Eclipse Foundation and to base future versions of its Java integrated development environment to the Eclipse platform. Kerpan was a speaker at both the EclipseCon and EclipseWorld conferences this year.
Asked what he considered his legacy at Borland, Kerpan said the companys ALM strategy is part of his legacy. For most of its life, Borland “helped developers write better software faster, and Im one of the people who said we can help development teams write better software faster.”
Indeed, Kerpan cited Internet connectivity as the key trend impacting his job over the last several years, as “that really drove the market to distributed development.”
Kerpan moved into his role as CTO last year when then Borland CTO Blake Stone left to join Microsoft. But Kerpan said Microsoft and IBM are the last places he is likely to work.
“If I want to work for the best ALM company Im at it,” he said.
Kerpans announcement of his plans to leave the company follows the resignation of former Borland CEO Dale Fuller by a few months.
Fuller resigned in July amid projections of poorer than expected financial results for the companys second quarter.