Re: Informix vs. Oracle wuz: Re: Informix?

At 07:48 PM 11/5/97 -0500, you wrote: >Jack Parker wrote: >>Plus grand soupir. > >I'm not sure anybody really cares what you had for lunch! ;-) You should, it was pretty good! Would you like some? Here, let me uuencode it and send it along. Hmmm, just let me load up the right datablade. ;-) >Well, I feel compelled to point out that AT&T and Bell Labs have never been >the federal gov't or a university, and have not been a small business in a >considerably long time. Unix has been in wide use there for considerably >longer than 10 years. Remember that Unix was invented for telecom use. Hadn't forgotten, just considered them to be a huge monolithic structure - not a competitive business until the breakup - you're right I was wrong not to count them. > >> If you look back to that era, what was THE database on Unix? I seem >>to remember reading the top Unix software packages list at that time - >>Informix won it by a landslide, Oracle wasn't even mentioned. > >Actually, Unify was THE Unix database at least until the mid 80s or so, at >which time Informix started making serious inroads. By 1990 or so, Informix >SE practically owned ATT/BL database business on the switch side (billing >side was and in many cases still is mainframe territory). There were two basic >reasons for this: Unify's design placed practical limits on the size of the database >(not to mention requiring complete database rebuild for ANY schema change), >and Informix SE was the only alternative (ok, C-ISAM as well, but if you >weren't inclined to build your own SQL engine, then SE was it). Hadn't realized, yes I ran into them a couple of times, but always considerd the big I to be the one. I don't recall the article I was referring to (Unix world or the other one - this would have been <think,think,think> about <morethinkmorethinkmorethink> 198 <hmmmmmmmm> 9? mentioning them. > >What really won most of the Unix market for Informix was not the engine, but >rather 4gl. It was simply the best thing out there. Of course, we all know the >dangers of sitting on one's laurels ;-). Hmmmmm, ok. > >[snip] >>Now about all of these businesses which have now adopted Unix. What did >>they used to use? >> >>Now why on earth would you think that this had no bearing on market share? > >If you are suggesting that a large share of Oracle's Unix business is from shops >swicthing to Unix from mainframes et. al. and sticking with the database vendor >they have been using for so many years, they you are, as Jonathan might say, >"spot on". Spot on in your analysis. However I'm not saying, by any means, that this is the only or primary reason. A thousand shames on Informix for not moving to intercept that >decision by marketing Informix so damn well that no manager making such a >decision would ever consider NOT talking to Informix BEFORE making it. >In almost 10 years at Informix I shudder to think about the deals lost over the >*impression* upper management (at potential customers) had of Informix vs. >Oracle, even when they ceded the technical edge to Informix. And those were >only the deals we got into. How many were there where we never even got the >opportunity to offer an alternative? > >The biggest reason for the current market share distribution is 17 years of ABYSMAL >marketing by Informix. And there is STILL no signs of improvement. What's up with >that? I cannot comment on that as such, I'm not and have never been from the sales side of anyone's house. What I saw over the past decade coming from Oracle was a massive sales effort - aimed at everybody and their uncle, which placed heavy emphasis on how good their product was, despite evidence to the contrary. Hard sell jobs. Huge commissions to sales people. Heavy emphasis on sales and minimal emphasis on product or quality. At the same time what I saw from Informix was emphasis on developing a good product and solving people's problems - NOT on selling it. So if you wanted something good you went to Informix, if your manager wasn't powerful enough to fend off the Big O salespeople you went with Oracle. Somehow that left a pretty good taste in my mouth with regard to Informix, at the same time I was worried that the company might not be there tomorrow unless they started to sell. Enter Phil White. I don't have the inside scoop on what went on back then, I only know that I started to see a lot more jobs become available with Informix written across them. I don't know if that should be ascribed to Phil or not. Now we have Bob and I have a very good feeling about that. I think we'll be here for a while - now speaking of being off topic... What happened to your address dave? cheers j. As always I do NOT speak for my employers in this group. //////////////// Jack Parker ////////// // Informix ECS Burlington MA ////// / /// 25 Burlington Mall Rd, Suite 400 ///// // //// Burlington, Ma 01803 //// // ///// 617-238-1619 /// // ////// jparker @ informix com // // /////// _________________________________________________________ / // //////// 'Outside of a dog a book is a man's best friend, //////////////// inside of a dog it's too dark to read.' - Groucho Marx ____________________________________________________________________________ echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln256%Pln256/snlbx]sb3135071790101768542287578439snlbxq'|dc