Re: OT:Is IBM going to be marketing Informix

"Jim Jordan" <wjjordan@nortel.ca> wrote in message news:cierhv$3vj$1@zcars0v6.ca.nortel.com... > In article <2r04ibF14f12eU1@uni-berlin.de>, > Neil Truby <neil.truby@ardenta.com> wrote: > >I've seen evidence recently, such as the ICON programme, that IBM are trying > >to do more with Informix, and have heard that the message to the direct > >sales team is no longer "lead with DB2". As an IBM reseller I have never > >received any such instruction to favour DB2 over Informix anyway, and so > >have not received contrary instructions either. > > Our account team (Canadian OEM) has indicated that they plan on leading > with Informix for OEM applications, because it's so easy to drop into a > turnkey system. IBM was surprised by the loyalty of the Informix user > base, and they are starting to realise that Informix was really a > well-hidden gem. And who hid it?

In article <2r10d8F14mpqtU1@uni-berlin.de>, Captain Pedantic <theharlequin36@hotmail.com> wrote: >And who hid it? The usual suspects ... Informix marketing, Orable overstaters, IBM acquisitions ... And for John's question: IBM is like a cat. You can't tell it anything. It has to discover things by itself. How long it takes to learn something is entirely up to the cat. Unfortunately, that discovery is only made by small pockets of people working directly with the (compared against DB2) small number of Informix customers. It might have been heard all the way up the data management unit's food chain, but then it hasn't found its way back down to all of the account reps yet. I'll be charitable and attribute that to the momentum DB2 had within IBM's account team, and the density of the corporate structure through which the value statements around Informix must flow. That density also extends to big companies that have lots of small projects going on. Every time we tried to promote or defend Informix, we always had to deal with "But it's not Oracle. Oracle's the corporate standard." And our response was always, "If you'll pay for the port to something that is less stable, requires more administration by users who don't want to know anything about databases but just want something that works, increases transaction latency and reduces throughput for our real-time application, increases our cost, and denies us the ability to price our product without running it by Oracle's office in each country's market, then we'll do it. Meanwhile, we have customer-paid features to develop." This kind of exchange happened at least annually, and with each reorganization. Now, if IBM open-sourced Informix (they won't in the short term; there's too much good stuff for DB2 to grab first), then someone could do something similar to one of the O'Reilly shirts on thinkgeek.com: "Informix? Il y a moins bien, mais c'est plus cher." Cheers, Jim -- W. Jim Jordan, Nortel Networks 5050 40 Street NE, Calgary, AB T3J 4P8 Canada wjjordan at nortelnetworks dot com +1 403 769 2590 Opinions expressed are not necessarily those of Nortel Networks.