Borland International

Software company originally founded in Denmark in 1979 by Niels Jensen as Midas ApS and initially specialised in creating add-on products for the WordStar word processor and later branched into the making of sundry microcomputer software products. A shell company was incorporated in the UK in 1981 as Borland Ltd., the name of the company has no relation to any of their founders, the company was a so-called "off the shelf company" that already had the name and as no one had registered it as a trademark the Danish owners decided to keep it as a brand name for their products.

The company became well known in 1983 when it delivered the first version of Turbo Pascal, a then revolutionary Pascal compiler for CP/M and later DOS, a year after Phillippe Kahn is hired to lead the marketing of the product in the USA.

Niels Jensen left Borland in 1987 to found Jensen & Partners International (JPI) after disagreements with other board members in relation to the decision to buy in a C compiler of an indifferent quality from a third party at a time when an in-house compiler with multiple front ends, including C and C++ was close to being finished. When he left he took with him the second generation compiler and released it under the TopSpeed brand in versions for Pascal, Modula-2 C and C++. The Ada front-end developed by Borland and finished off by JPI was never released by the latter company as by the time it had been finished to a validatable standard, the USA Department of Defence had decided to sponsor a freeware versions of an Ada compiler the eventually became GNAT, and JPI decided that there was not a market for a commercial offering in competition to a free one.

After Jensen left the company it's headquarters were effectively moved to the USA.

Known products