Tod Nielsen, Borland's president and CEO, said the move to divest the IDE business will allow the company to focus on the "next major wave of opportunity" in software development -- the transition from a series of isolated activities to a managed process.

"Borland is spread too thin across a diverse product portfolio, which has negatively impacted our best efforts to execute across ALM," he said.

Melinda Ballou, an analyst at IDC in Framingham, Mass., said the Segue acquisition helps fill out Borland's ALM portfolio of products by adding testing and the process for quality assurance and optimization.

"They have the right vision -- execution is going to be a tough one," she said, noting that competition includes IBM, CA Inc., Mercury Interactive Corp. and Compuware Corp.