Alan Zeichick, in today's SD Times News on Thursday, observes two aspects of Borland's re-org that are troubling: "The first is combining sales and professional services together into one field operations group. The other is folding customer support into research & development."
Zeichick says: "Knowing that the goal of a sales department is to increase revenue and meet quotas, do you think that Borland's professional services?ahem, now field operations?team is going to be looking for ways to offer you advice on how to save money, or on how to spend more money with Borland? I can see why Borland thinks it's a good idea to turn consultants into salespeople, but I don't think it's good for customers."
He's less troubled about the customer service / R&D combination, but it seems to me equally troublesome. They are vastly different services, one focused on what's shipped and one focused on what's (at least) one release away. R&D requires a mindset that, to a certain extent, waves its hands ("if every developer had dual monitors running at 1600 x 1200, you could have an environment that looked like this"). Customer service requires a mindset that is all about the specifics ("they're running at 800 x 600 and they don't have accelerated graphics. How do they make the project window visibile?").
It's hard for me to imagine a combined environment providing the focus that both vital services require.