Informix will publish benchmarks

Sitting here at IIUG listening to Rob Thomas talk and he says Informix will publish benchmarks. What will Gumby complain about now?

On Apr 26, 6:42 pm, Clancy <russcla...@aol.com> wrote: > Sitting here at IIUG listening to Rob Thomas talk and he says Informix > will publish benchmarks.  What will Gumby complain about now? LOL! Oh the list is long. Ok, I'll byte. (pun intended) Did Rob Thomas happen to mention which benchmark they intend to publish? :-) C'mon you know you want to tell me. :-) The truth is that its taken 4 years of slamming a simple point home that the numb nutz(s) in product marketing start to realize that unless they give talking points about their product, they won't win any arguments. Oracle doesn't need to do benchmarks because they are the 800lb Gorilla and the competitive argument against Oracle isn't performance but price. (Postgres... "we perform just as good as Oracle, but we're only 1/10th of the price!") ;-) Now if only Jerry, puts the pressure on whomever is WW Sales of Database and WW Sales of Informix to get some parity within the IT Specialists... but that will take some real work on Jerry's part. (Hint: Jerry, put a call in to the head of IM and make it part of their PBCs.) [Ooops! That's an IBM exec secret. If you want someone to actually do something, get it in their PBCs ;-) ] The real question you have to ask yourself... what would have happened if IBM had been paying attention to Gumby? ;-) But hey! What do I know?

Clancy said: > Sitting here at IIUG listening to Rob Thomas talk and he says Informix > will publish benchmarks. What will Gumby complain about now? Advertising, a lack of respect for his opinions, the fact that he doesn't fit into his wife's lingerie any more ... -- Bye now, Obnoxio http://obotheclown.blogspot.com/ -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by OpenProtect(http://www.openprotect.com), and is believed to be clean.

Ok, On a serious note. Which benchmarks is very important. Choosing a benchmark that no one cares about doesn't do any good. Also IBM has to commit to participating in the benchmark wars. Doing a benchmark and then going MIA... not good. Worse than not doing one at all. There are a lot of reasons for doing benchmarks, one of them is to give your sales force a talking point, or marketing to put out a PR piece. Talking points don't sell software or solutions. They give the sales team a reason to interface with the clients and to solicit their pains or help identify latent pains. (This is IBM Sales 'SSM' 101.) [More on this ... see below] There are reasons why Oracle doesn't need to do benchmarks. It deals more with their business model and how they plan to grow their business. IBM, Informix took a different business model and thus making benchmarks more important to their success. And understanding the implications of the marketing and sales model should be required by anyone in a senior product development/marketing/sales position. IBM's SSM (Solution Selling Methodology) means that IBM must be able to provide a solution and not just components. However since IBM doesn't sell end apps like PeopleSoft as part of the IM or SWG piece, they are at the mercy of the customer. If someone wants PeopleSoft, now owned by Oracle, Oracle can offer 1 stop shopping. IBM? Global Services can resell, but can they show a value add over Oracle? Not easy. So what happens when IBM determines DB2 BCE appliances are the way to go, they can only sell that to customers who are running and developing new DB2 warehouses. And that's their only talking point. Doesn't do anyone any good unless the customer is specifically looking at DB2 for data warehousing. And that's the point. If all you have are talking points on DB2 as data warehousing... you have limited ability to bring up conversation to solicit the customer's pain, or even ask questions to determine latent pain. Benchmarks are solution neutral. You can stop in and see if they've seen the latest benchmarks and then talk about the customer starting from a neutral position. Also once you find the pain, you can go back and try and deliver a solution. Of course that means that you have industry solutions or other talking points in place. (Again something I tried to get through IBM's IM management's thick collective heads.) The sad thing is that this is pretty basic product management/marketing/sales 101. (Ok, maybe it isn't that obvious, except to people who actually think about it.) Of course not have complete or partnered solutions is problematic. Is IBM willing to invest in the R&D to generate these? Keep in mind that the next generation of college grads will be looking at NoSQL technology along with the tons of offshore resources already investing in to this lower cost technology. Its still possible to come up with a competing solution, but IBM has to get their collected head out of their collective ass and start paying attention. Somehow I think that when Sam Retires, Steve Mills will also retire. :-) But hey! What do I know? Its not like we've seen companies cut their expenses to the bone, and gutted their competitive advantage in the name of short term profits.... -G > From: russclancy@aol.com > Subject: Informix will publish benchmarks > Date: Mon, 26 Apr 2010 16:42:42 -0700 > To: informix-list@iiug.org > > Sitting here at IIUG listening to Rob Thomas talk and he says Informix > will publish benchmarks. What will Gumby complain about now? > _______________________________________________ > Informix-list mailing list > Informix-list@iiug.org > http://www.iiug.org/mailman/listinfo/informix-list _________________________________________________________________ The New Busy is not the too busy. Combine all your e-mail accounts with Hotmail. http://www.windowslive.com/campaign/thenewbusy?tile=multiaccount&ocid=PID28326::T:WLMTAGL:ON:WL:en-US:WM_HMP:042010_4