Re: flagship sunk

Elan Le Blanc wrote: > Mark Townsend wrote: > >>This is IBM's data server strategy ? >>http://www-306.ibm.com/software/sw-bycategory/subcategory/SWB30.html ? > > > No. This is a list of products. > >>OK. Then we win. IBM has no focus. They have lost the plot. Your >>management could not even hope to keep the analysts awake explaining all >>this to them, let alone have them understand it all. The IBM field will >>not know what to sell, or worse still, sell against each other. >>Customers will simply be confused. > > > Perhaps you missed your companies purchase of TimesTen this year to > help you compete in the embedded space. Nope - Didn't miss it. If you look at it you will see it is becoming the "Oracle TimesTen In-Memory Database". TimesTen is primarily positioned (and is selling well) as a "make Oracle run faster for certain types of applications". So it complements Oracle's core business very, very nicely, and is a strong upsell for the field. And we are doing a lot of R&D to make sure that this integration is even better in the future. BTW - everyone is very happy with this approach > IBM has a clear focus and has listened to our customers and business > partners regarding what their needs are. Informix is alive and well and > uniquely suited for it's purpose and we are going to build on it's > strengths. The analysts thus far seem able to grasp what we are doing > and our customers certainly do. Hmm - that is, except for the customers on this newsgroup. > > The sales teams know what to sell and how to do it. And they have been > doing it for the past year. This has been evidenced by a number of > things. We get quite a bit of play around Informix take-out offers on > Oracle.com, we get more air there than anywhere. Seems a waste of web > real estate if we are not causing someone worry. Sure. The world has a limited supplies of 1 and 0's and we need to conserve some of them. We do not even track Informix as a competitor anymore. > We had a number of > significant Oracle take-outs this year. One customer reports that > replacing their Oracle with IDS will save them $33M. So throw these guys here a bone. A simple name or online profile would go miles at the moment > > Perhaps that is true. Have you been with the dark side so long that > you can no longer see a customer-centric winning strategy when you see > one? > That's my point. This approach is not customer centric, it's IBM centric. There is no way IBM can put enough wood behind all these arrows to make them all count. So IBM are not. > Christine > > Christine Normile > IDS Channel Manager > IBM Information Management >