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

Christine Normile wrote: > Double Echo raises many good points. High on our list of deliverables > this year is collateral to back up the benefits of Informix such as > analyst papers, benchmarks and more visible marketing of the products. > We will also have a strong focus on specific industries. That doesn't > mean we will pigeon hole Informix into a specific segment, just that we > can leverage the industries where our value proposition has the greatest > resonance. > Thank you for acknowledging me. If there were one thing I'd suggest as a way to make things happen for Informix peoples, it would be a **strong** developer program, and that means more than just a web site. It means no time-out downloads, and trials, JUST LIKE DB2. Put together a checklist if you will of what you do TODAY for DB2, and make sure that Informix has parity with DB2. Let the market decide what they want. You will certainly have some losses along the way but a lot more wins than you currently have. Developers are smart enough to smell a waste of time on trial software that is not the real deal. They also like t-shirts, pens, pencils, coffee cups and all that jazz. Immerse them in the sauce. Trial downloads I'd like to see: -- XPS : FULL DOWNLOAD NO TIMEOUT -- IDS : FULL DOWNLOAD NO TIMEOUT -- Language stack: 4GL, ESQL/C packaged all-in-one no bs download Consider putting one of the Informix products out to Open Source. In the grand scheme of things IBM already has a rich experience with Linux and how it has helped the bottom line. But when you look at only $100 million or so in sales for IDS, consider how much more you can do with more exposure by selling into the Open Source space. You also have an excellent opportunity to trump MySQL RIGHT-FRIGGIN-NOW because MySQL sold off InnoDB to Oracle. Think about what that means and what will happen next. You don't need me to tell you what this means. > We certainly have internal communication issues that are caused by the > size of the company and the amount of information we are bombarded with > daily. However, we have our yearly Software Group kick-off next week and > it will have a major focus on our database strategy and our sales team > will be presented with the value proposition of IDS and key industries > to focus on. > Good. Think outside the box. Database market needs new thinking and new offers to developers constantly to get their attention to YOUR products and not somebody else's product. If you get developers on board you have won half the battle because they are your best inside sales force. Don't depend on the IIUG to do all the work either, there are plenty of people out there who know nothing about Informix or what it is, and this will have to come from IBM, not a user group or a handful of zealots. > Communicating the Informix message internally will continue to be a > major focus. > If Informix is as good as we know it is you have nothing to worry about pushing it out there. You push it we use it we push it you support it. Thanks! >

Double Echo said: > > Immerse them in the sauce. Like bukkake, you mean? :o? -- Bye now, Obnoxio "C'est pas parce qu'on n'a rien ' dire qu'il faut fermer sa gueule" - Coluche did i mention i like nulls? heck, i even go so far as to say that all columns in a table except the primary key could/should be nullable. this has certain advantages, for example, if you need to insert a child record and you don't have a parent row for it, just do an insert into the parent table with the primary key value (everything else null), and voila, relational integrity is preserved. but this is, admittedly, a bit controversial among modellers. --r937, dbforums.com

Obnoxio The Clown wrote: > Double Echo said: > >>Immerse them in the sauce. > > > Like bukkake, you mean? :o? > Do you ever sleep? 8-)