Re: Informix#@!& -- enough is enough!

Some call me Tim wrote : : As you all may have heard, Informix has just restated its first : quarter '98 results to reflect a $400,000 LOSS -- instead of the : $5M profit that was previously stated. It's not the loss that : irks me, its the fact that Informix is once again 'restating' : its financial statements. As I understand it, this was at the urging of the current auditing firm they are using, which decided and recommended that Informix use a more conservative approach to recognizing specific types of revenue. SInce Bob wants to play it as careful as possible, he agreed to this. Why they didn't do it BEFORE announcing the numbers, or defer the new recognition to the next quarter, I don't know. It really is just "funney money" after all, and just a question of when you recognize income. All the high techs will have to go through similar pains sooner or later as accounting practices change. : This comes at a time when my employer is very apprehensive : about investing more dollars into Informix technology. An IDS : 7.3 upgrade is out! Understandable. But Informix is not going to go away. Worst case, they get bought up. Same products, different parent company. But even that is not too likely. : Granted, the Informix Dynamic Server 7.x engine is a fabulous product. Way cool features, improved performance. Definitely a winner. : But this latest setback is a clear indication that the business side of : Informix Software, Inc., is still very suspect -- to put it nicely. Nah. They are on the up and up - it's just accountants having mood swings, really. They are really ok on the financial side. : Give Oracle credit, they may not have the 'best' database on the : market, but they're obviously *far* superior on the 'business' side than : Informix. Not really. Oracle went through similar turmoil some years ago for "questionable" recognition of revenue. They will have the same situation as Informix this past quarter if they decide to change the revenue recognition policy as did Informix. Where Oracle beats the crap out of Informix is on the marketing side (when I used to work for Informix, the line was, "Know what hardware Oracle runs best on? The overhead projector." ;-)). That is Informix's achilles heel and has been for years. Others have commented on the new marketing head. I'll remain optimistic, but with low expectations. History tells us that Informix can't get the marketing side together. I'd love to see this change - what a difference some good marketing would make. : To make matters worse, Informix has totaly missed the boat in the NT : market. Let's face it: there is no way that the company can continue to : exist as an indepedent database vendor. Start waiving the white flag... Well I'm not counting them out yet on NT. If they shift their price points and move on the marketing, they can still capture a lot of that market. But they have to move fast before the next version of SQLServer gets out. They have the tech edge right now, but MS will catch up fast. The big potential is with IUS on NT. If only they would realize that pricing IUS the same as IDS will win bigger market share (on all platforms). Dave (posting from home, speaking as a representative of nobody but himself) ********** "Everybody plays the fool, sometimes."