Borland Expands in Embedded Space

Borland Software Corp. Tuesday announced that it has acquired Highlander Engineering Inc. in a move aimed at bolstering its presence in the embedded systems market.

Borland bought Lakeland, Fla.-based Highlander, a provider of software solutions for the embedded systems market, in a cash deal worth about $2 million over a two-year period, Borland officials said.

Scotts Valley, Calif.-based Borlands CEO Dale Fuller said in a statement that the deal to acquire Highlander “builds on our introduction of JBuilder MobileSet and JDataStore and expands Borlands presence in the embedded and wireless applications space.”

Highlander is a longtime Borland partner. Founded in 1994, it has been a Borland partner since 1996, Borland officials said. The company markets VisiBroker-RT, a Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) runtime for embedded systems based on the core technology in Borlands Enterprise Server, Borland officials said.

Ken Black, founder, president and CEO of Highlander, said in a statement that joining Borland is a boon for Highlanders technology, as it will now enjoy Borlands global distribution and support network.

“As embedded and enterprise applications become more tightly integrated and converge, rapid development of distributed applications across heterogeneous environments is becoming a must-have capability for todays embedded systems developers,” Black said. As part of Borland, Highlander can better deliver that, he said.

Highlanders developers will remain in their offices in Florida, while sales and marketing and other functions will be merged into Borlands existing facilities, the company said.