RE: The irony of IBM's Lack of Information Management Marketing...

" Apparently not: viz SAP, Lawson etc. " .......and PeopleSoft Now there's a big-time fella at IBM who swings a big bat that's gonna fix these third-party relationships. -----Original Message----- From: informix-list-bounces@iiug.org [mailto:informix-list-bounces@iiug.org] On Behalf Of Neil Truby Sent: Monday, January 09, 2006 2:30 AM To: informix-list@iiug.org Subject: Re: The irony of IBM's Lack of Information Management Marketing... "trev" <trev@nowhere.com> wrote in message news:Xns9746D8108BCEFtrevnowherecom@67.97.85.12... > > Good point. Which begs the question "Why build an application using > Informix as the database?" Again the answer is probably due to legacy > issues (ie the software house has always developed on/in Informix). The major factors governing the choice would be cost and reliability/supportability. The OEM agreements on Informix are pretty generous, and it's a reliable product so it should score highly but .... > "Would a development house seek to support a database for a new > product or new version if the database owner was not actively > marketing the product?" Apparently not: viz SAP, Lawson etc. >> One can only presume that they are spending the money on development because they expect a financial return through new or renewed licences. They clearly are spending a small fortune on the product, but if they are not going to promote it, I can't understand why. _______________________________________________ Informix-list mailing list Informix-list@iiug.org http://www.iiug.org/mailman/listinfo/informix-list

Thanks, Serge for the word from China. Our team did not do China and India in 2005 because we went in 2004 and determined that the workload there was too significant to tackle in 2005 with the launch of IDS v10.0 last spring. I have asked Mark to book 6 weeks this summer for a China and India tour explicitly to recruit IDS business partners. Double Echo had a few questions: What makes Informix compelling instead of Oracle, MS-SQL-Server, IBM-DB2 or MySQL? Oracle: 78% of IDS customers use a combination of IDS, Oracle and MS SQL Server. The benefits to them of IDS are obvious. As told to us by many customers, IDS requires far fewer DBA resources (up to 1,000 global instances managed by a single DBA), much higher reliability and lower cost (IDS and Oracle EE CPU price are the same at $40K, however, we do not charge extra for features such as high-availability, enterprise replication and partitioning. Also, our partitioning does not require application changes to leverage which is a big money saver to growing businesses. Our customers who know the value of IDS vs. Oracle have demonstrated that to us this year by taking advantage of our competitive trade-in offers. Major telecom vendors in the US, France, China and Columbia have all recently replaced Oracle with IDS, one vendor has stated that move will save their company $33M. Some customers understand the value of IDS so well that they will not deploy applications on competitive databases. Customers must stand up to ISVs when they want support for a specific platform that will mean increased profits for their business. The value proposition for the ISV is: if you support IDS, I will buy your application; if not, I'll go elsewhere. Customers have to understand that they have more clout with vendors than they believe. Our individual customers and business partners have proven that with IBM as that input is what changed the direction regarding Informix here. MS SQL Server: Reliability and scalability. I will grant that the actual reliability of MS SQL Server will never be known as long as it's only platform is Windows. We have some price issues vis-a-vis MS SQL Server but we are working on those and our sales team has the tools to work around those issues with our customers and business partners. MySQL. Functionality, performance, reliability, high availability, backed by IBM. Why would management pay for Informix instead of something else? IDS provides the lowest TCO with competitive pricing, extremely low administration requirements and phenomenal performance and scalability. IBM also consistently is rated higher than ALL other database vendors regarding service and support. Management needs to factor this in when they look at the cost of our maintenance and the impact to the business of having problems solved quickly and accurately. What is the benefit to Informix? I guess I don't understand this question. IBM invests in products based on how much the product brings in to the company. Look at the investment over the past 4.5 years and it is evident that companies like Gartner need some math lessons. The more customers buying Informix and business partners building on IDS, the more investment IBM makes and the more our product grows. Jerry Hamilton wrote: Now there's a big-time fella at IBM who swings a big bat that's gonna fix these third-party relationships. I'll keep you posted on this very major Informix team issue.

I did find out that there were a number of clients in China that attended the Chat w/ the Labs. Also - there were a number of engineers and lab personnel that did do client visits and participate in Infobahns in China in 2006. So - we did have IBM presence in China this year (to respond to the earlier speculation that we did not). Thanks - Mark Scranton IBM Worldwide Informix Team

Elan Le Blanc wrote: "The more customers buying Informix and business partners building on IDS, the more investment IBM makes and the more our product grows." That's absolutely true. And I hope IDS will have success, because it's a great product. But things would be a little bit easier, if you couldn't find the string "DB2" thirteen times on www.ibm.com/software/data.

Jï¿œrgen Buck wrote: > Elan Le Blanc wrote: "The more customers buying > Informix and business partners building on IDS, the more investment IBM > > makes and the more our product grows." > > That's absolutely true. And I hope IDS will have success, because it's > a great product. But things would be a little bit easier, if you > couldn't find the string "DB2" thirteen times on > www.ibm.com/software/data. Maybe IBM should send their web developers to a graphics software training, so that they will be able to cut the "DB2" in front of the "DB2 Information Management Software" graphic -:) It is really annoying that this is still not fixed on the official IBM Informix website (http://www.ibm.com/informix). And please put the message about IDS being IBM's flagship database for OLTP on the first page, not hidden on a subpage (http://www.ibm.com/software/data/informix/ids10). This message is important and it needs to be shared with everyone visiting the IBM Informix website. Discard the word "pure" from the message as this only leads to doubts about the scope of the message. What is a "pure OLTP" system ? Sometimes I've got the feeling that claim and reality are drifting apart at IBM. Customers who purchased Informix software and rely on it have the right to see an appropriate marketing for the product. Excuse me, but currently I would say, this is definitely not the case. So one fair consequence from IBM side would be to reduce the product price, because IBM has no significant expenses for IDS marketing. If the price remains the same, then please do an appropriate product marketing. I respect and support the enthusiasm of people like Mark Scranton and several other Informix people inside and outside IBM. This is really admirable. But I although agree to most of the points that 'Double Echo' mentioned. It's time to wake up now before it's too late. 2006 might be the last chance to revive Informix and this will require special product offers and dedicated Informix marketing programs. The key is to generate a good spirit around Informix. Application Developers and DBA's must feel comfortable working with IDS as it was the case some years ago in the mid-nineties. They must have the sense that Informix is great technology to work with and that it will help their future career. I know that this is not easy and I have no recipe how to accomplish this, but I'm confident that - with the help of the loyal Informix customer base - it is still possible. However the first, major steps for this to happen must be done by IBM.