The sudden resignation comes as the company reports poorer than expected financial results.

Borland Software Corp. CEO Dale Fuller has resigned amid projections of poorer than expected financial results for the company's second quarter.

Although the company would not disclose exactly why Fuller quit, it announced that his role will be filled on an interim basis by Scott Arnold, Borland's chief operating officer and executive vice president.

The software development tools maker has been pushing its ALM (application lifecycle management) strategy and SDO (software delivery optimization) theme as both competed and partnered with industry heavyweights such as IBM and Microsoft Corp. in the tools space.

However, in announcing preliminary results the company said it expects to post a net loss of 24 cents to 26 cents a share, compared with its earlier forecast of a loss of 19 cents to 21 cents a share. Borland officials also said the company expects to report sales of $65 million to $67 million, which is a drop from the $70 million to $73 million range the company had projected.

Fuller spent six years at Borland and had helped to settle the company and turn it to profitability after a series of lean years that began after the heyday of Borland founder Philippe Kahn.

What was it like to work with Kahn during Borland's early years? Click here to read "Borland's Early Years: 'A Wild Ride.'"

Meanwhile, Borland earlier this year pledged greater support for the Eclipse open-source development environment, which one analyst said has been "eating Borland's lunch" in relation to the company's JBuilder Java integrated development environment. However, Borland's top engineers said they have been putting as much emphasis on designing for Eclipse as for Microsoft's .Net technology for some time now.

Borland, which has proudly boasted of being the Switzerland of software development, also produces technology to help developers bridge the Java and .Net worlds, as well as bridge the diverging modeling formats of Microsoft and the Object Management Group's UML (Unified Modeling Language).

Borland continues to be a source of innovation in the software tools business and to attract talented developers and seed the industry with talent as well, analysts said. In addition, the company continues to maintain a loyal following.

In a statement, Borland Chairman William K. Hooper, said: "I would like to thank Dale for his six years of service and his leadership during the initial stages of Borland's transition. While we are disappointed with the second quarter results, we continue to see positive developments in demand for the company's ALM (application lifecycle management) products and customer success in Borland's largest ALM implementations. The Board of Directors has confidence in Scott Arnold and the executive team's ability to manage the near-term challenges in the business and better position Borland to realize the potential of the application lifecycle management market."

This article was originally published on eWEEK.com.

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