Re: INFORMIX WISH LIST

On Mon, 16 Jun 1997, Michael Segel wrote: > First, your mileage will vary when it comes to sales reps. > I have know quite a few sales reps, and sales management over the > last several years. Some have been excellent, some have been good, > and well, some have been piss poor. This is one of the > reasons Informix has re-organized their sales force in several areas. That's a sore spot with us right now. They 'reorganized' our rep, Jim Davis, out of our area. Shortly thereafter, he left and went to Legato. now, of course, we can't get him back. Grr. If any of you end up with him for your Legato rep, you've got a good one. Better yet, if he's your Legato rep, piss him off and send have him quit and come back to Informix would you? > (Heck, *I* could probably sell some of the products better than > some of their salesmen ;-) [Whoops! I'm going to get cooked for that > one!] No contest there. I don't remember the last time we've been 'sold' on a product or given advance information directly from Informix. I'm sure its happened, I just don't remember it. > Second, unless you work for a very big Informix shop, you will NOT, > get the following chances: > > 1) To be on the Customer Advisory board to Informix. (I forget the > real name, but its the big dog group which has direct input > to Phil baby ;-) Hrm. What is the official name of this board? This is the first I've heard of it. Depending on the requirements, we /might/ be able to push someone onto such a board -- might not. Of course, it would have to be someone higher up than me... > 2) You will not get the chance to participate in their Beta Program. > Unless you are a major customer, yada, yada, yada. Well, for early betas I'd agree with that. A good beta test, in most people's eyes, includes allocating a lot of resources to the project, providing detailed feedback, et cetera. I don't think we need the 'Netscape' beta definition here -- but that's just my opinion. > 3) Certain products exist out of a political need. > New Era was created what 5-6 years ago when the current slew > of development tools didn't exist. This is a good point, although not particularly germaine to the current path this discussion has got to. > 4) You have to remember one of the problems which Informix > had was that they believed their marketing hype. I mean > to say is that while the technology is there, there are > several glitches which don't make it ready for prime time. > This always exists, however it has gotten bad over the > past year or so. Hint: Look at the release of Online 7.x > from its announcement to its general availability. Can you say 6.x? I thought you could. Seriously, this is probably the most frustrating part about dealing with Informix. So many nice ideas, just failing 'slightly' in execution. So close, and yet so far. > While I don't agree with the idea of posting a wish/whine list, > I think that it does show the degree of frustration felt by > the little guy who has to support the products sold by a > marketing guy to his upper management. Hrm. To be honest, it has been a while since I've been in a small shop, so a lot of my comments are coming from a Partner perspective. Since we're a decently large development shop /and/ one of the largest VARs in the states, we've been able to get Informix to listen to us more than most, I guess. > Oh, I mispoke. If you happen to have a copy of Universal Server, > then you *ARE* in the beta test program. ;-) Nah, its not beta. It's 'limited distribution' or some other marketing definition. :=) -Richard