Food for thought...

Its always good to think outside the box. Informix has survived the attempted purge by Janet, albeit, enough damage was done. So the question of growth depends on being able to maintain the existing customers while attracting new growth. Clearly you're not going to see as much support from other divisions of IBM since they are still brainwashed that IBM's database is DB2. (Sorry Jerry and Ambuj, it will take several years and a lot of hard internal work to fix that misconception.)[Note: Selling to S&D does work, but you need senior management (Jerry, Cathy, especially Alyse) contacting regional BUEs to support and require mandatory sessions. You can contact me on how to do this effectively....] So thinking outside of the box means to look for opportunities that wouldn't regularly exist. Two of such areas are Apple and Sun Microsystems (JAVA). Apple is slowly integrating in to the business community. There's some software that allows one to create a windows VM while under OS X thus making it easier for companies to accept Apple's hardware and the company's own Window's image for corporate work. Apple does not own a database and isn't tied to a LAMP model. Sun is a bit more interesting. In purchasing MySQL for a billion, they've essentially bought the rights to the software that millions of site use in LAMP and have put unlicensed in to production environments. (Sun won't chase them for license fees because of the negative publicity.) But by buying MySQL, they have a "framework" or "core" to a database engine that they can release on a commercial scale. The thought is to capitalize on the "brand" and potentially convert growing LAMP installations to their commercial version which would offer features like data/table partitioning, shared nothing clusters, and they could code the engine to run more efficiently on their Rock hardware. Rock is multi-core, however Sun's concept is unlike Intels where the cores are more lightweight and have a different I/O structure to memory and the other cores. Sun claims that their processors are more efficient for multi-threaded applications. They acknowledge that for the majority of applications out there, they would have to rewrite the apps to allow for better parallelism. Informix is probably the best commerical engine that can take advantage of the Rock because of how it has been engineered. Clearly Sun's long term goal is to enhance MySQL, however Rock is coming out soon and MySQL will take more time (years) before it will be able to take advantage of Rock. This puts Sun in an interesting position. It also put IBM in an interesting position. Does IBM's IM reach out to Sun because they will need to port to Rock for their existing Informix customers on Sun or do they wait. (I dont' think its much of porting as it is regression testing.) So there are two possible areas for growth outside of the box that wouldn't require a large investment by IBM. Sure they will have to invest some time and build up a relationship with Sun and Apple. (IBM did disband their Sun Ranger team, however that doesn't mean they couldn't restart it...) Also it would give IBM IM a benchmarking partner for IDS. (BENCHMARK IDS ON ROCK!!!) And lets not discount an opportunity within IBM. IBM can still push a high end blade system using Cell instead of Intel Chips. With fast interconnect to high speed SAS , they could benchmark IDS on cell. (Imagine if they retained XPS and put that on a blade system... ;-) This wouldn't compete with DB2 because I don't believe that they've ported DB2 to the Cell. (But they did run IDS on the PS3...) So there are three avenues that could lead to future success. Will IBM IM work on any of this? Faster, cheaper, and more efficient. How more "green" can you get? -G

Ian Michael Gumby wrote: > > It also put IBM in an interesting position. Does IBM's IM reach out to > Sun because they will need to port to Rock for their existing Informix > customers on Sun or do they wait. (I dont' think its much of porting > as it is regression testing.) Personally, I think Sun is the hardware vendor most likely to go to the wall in the recession. But that's just an opinion. And I'm not shorting them. :o) -- Cheers, Obnoxio The Clown http://obotheclown.blogspot.com

Ian Michael Gumby wrote: > Its always good to think outside the box. Informix has survived the > attempted purge by Janet, albeit, enough damage was done. > > So the question of growth depends on being able to maintain the > existing customers while attracting new growth. > > Clearly you're not going to see as much support from other divisions > of IBM since they are still brainwashed that IBM's database is DB2. > (Sorry Jerry and Ambuj, it will take several years and a lot of hard > internal work to fix that misconception.)[Note: Selling to S&D does > work, but you need senior management (Jerry, Cathy, especially Alyse) > contacting regional BUEs to support and require mandatory sessions. > You can contact me on how to do this effectively....] > > So thinking outside of the box means to look for opportunities that > wouldn't regularly exist. Two of such areas are Apple and Sun > Microsystems (JAVA). Apple is slowly integrating in to the business > community. There's some software that allows one to create a windows > VM while under OS X thus making it easier for companies to accept > Apple's hardware and the company's own Window's image for corporate > work. Apple does not own a database and isn't tied to a LAMP model. > > Sun is a bit more interesting. In purchasing MySQL for a billion, > they've essentially bought the rights to the software that millions of > site use in LAMP and have put unlicensed in to production > environments. (Sun won't chase them for license fees because of the > negative publicity.) The license allows basically unfettered production use Gumpy. They don't have much if anything to chase. > But by buying MySQL, they have a "framework" or > "core" to a database engine that they can release on a commercial > scale. The thought is to capitalize on the "brand" and potentially > convert growing LAMP installations to their commercial version which > would offer features like data/table partitioning, shared nothing > clusters, and they could code the engine to run more efficiently on > their Rock hardware. > Partitioning is available today. MySQL = SE + partitioning TODAY. > Rock is multi-core, however Sun's concept is unlike Intels where the > cores are more lightweight and have a different I/O structure to > memory and the other cores. Sun claims that their processors are more > efficient for multi-threaded applications. They acknowledge that for > the majority of applications out there, they would have to rewrite the > apps to allow for better parallelism. Informix is probably the best > commercial engine that can take advantage of the Rock because of how > it has been engineered. > Why think in the theoretical when you can think reality. IBM has a bigger problem of shrinking mind share about IBM as a company. IBM isn't on the top of company lists of hardware choices anymore, at least not from where I see. Everywhere I turn I see Dell and HP, not IBM, and not much Sun either. And what apps do we get to pick from IBM? __________________. Crapplications. Lotus? yawn. DB2? yawn. Domino? Websphere? Tivoli? Absolutely no mind share in mainstream computing for IBM's stack. Just a bunch of old, ugly, 1980s style apps. Nothing innovative about any of it. Most of these apps are geared toward big companies, they have no reach into the larger market. You can bet that as IBM shrinks it will have to dance and start to innovate to stay alive, besides just outsourcing and offshoring their projects to India. IBM may even be forced to unload Informix or other products simply because they can't sell or support it, in realigning their core products. Don't think it wouldn't happen. The best time to sell Informix is on its way up as it emerges, not after it flattens out. Reality is this: Name brand big ticket items are at the bottom of the list now. Without going into details I am working with a media company that is moving aggressively towards a total open source stack, and may even be looking at the desktop as part of this strategy. They have a strong Oracle and Java product but the periphery is rich with open source tools. Instead of buying expensive monitoring software they have Nagios, and Cacti. Instead of BEA they have JBOSS. Instead of a payware ticket system they have an open source ticket system. Agility is the key. The economic catastrophe is making Open Source across the board the number one choice, and using commodity hardware and software are the rule now. In fact, Open Office is really good enough to replace Office, and yes a Mac version is available that I think is better than most of Office. The only think Microsoft really has left is Exchange, and soon even Exchange is going to become less relevant. There are also cheaper project management tools as good as MS Project, and a lot of Visio-style tools too. I used Scribus yesterday to create a diagram that you can't tell wasn't done in Visio, and Scribus has a "export to PDF" feature that did exactly what I needed. > Clearly Sun's long term goal is to enhance MySQL, however Rock is > coming out soon and MySQL will take more time (years) before it will > be able to take advantage of Rock. This puts Sun in an interesting > position. > I wouldn't link MySQL's success or failure to Rock. MySQL is already out there, entrenched. Download the latest version and really take a look at it. Compile it from source, and look at its options. > It also put IBM in an interesting position. Does IBM's IM reach out to > Sun because they will need to port to Rock for their existing Informix > customers on Sun or do they wait. (I dont' think its much of porting > as it is regression testing.) > No. > So there are two possible areas for growth outside of the box that > wouldn't require a large investment by IBM. Sure they will have to > invest some time and build up a relationship with Sun and Apple. (IBM > did disband their Sun Ranger team, however that doesn't mean they > couldn't restart it...) Also it would give IBM IM a benchmarking > partner for IDS. (BENCHMARK IDS ON ROCK!!!) > Nobody cares. Not your fault either. :-) > And lets not discount an opportunity within IBM. Gumpy, keep this in mind, as companies like IBM continue to ignore the market, other companies that are hungry are going to replace the opportunities that IBM misses. This is just the way it works, it's not rocket surgery. MySQL is replacing a lot of other choices because it's good enough as a choice. It's not perfect but it is good enough. MySQL is working it from the bottom up not the top down. It's worked well for them ( and notice Obama used the same strategy? ). > IBM can still push a high end blade system using Cell instead of Intel > Chips. > With fast interconnect to high speed SAS , they could benchmark IDS on > cell. > (Imagine if they retained XPS and put that on a blade system... ;-) > > This wouldn't compete with DB2 because I don't believe that they've > ported DB2 to the Cell. (But they did run IDS on the PS3...) > > So there are three avenues that could lead to future success. Will IBM > IM work on any of this? > Faster, cheaper, and more

InDeep wrote: > well for them ( and notice Obama used the same strategy? ). Ah, the delights of marketing: http://obotheclown.blogspot.com/2008/12/deconstructing-one.html Obama’s campaign did receive an unprecedented number of small donations – 49% of its money came in donations of $200 or less, compared with only 32% of George W Bush’s 2004 campaign. But many of these donations were from people who donated repeatedly. As a result, only 26% of his funds came from donors who in total gave $200 or less, *a mere 1% up on Bush’s 2004 25% figure*. -- Cheers, Obnoxio The Clown http://obotheclown.blogspot.com