Re: New-Era, how good is it?

> Pietrykowski <linmarie@wam.umd.edu> writes: > > > On 22 Jun 1995 Nils.Myklebust@CCMAIL.telemax.no wrote: > >everything deleted! > > Informix is not going to make a lot of money selling a c/s tool. Lets > face it, you don't make money selling a compiler. You make money on > something that everyone want to use. How many people are going to go out > and buy a C/S tool? Only people that are developing an application. Now > who is developing C/S applications? I have heard something about 250.000 sold licenses for Informix 4GL. A year or two ago Microsoft passed 1 mill licenses for VB. (2 or 3 million now?) Not C/S applications for the most part of course, but see below! Powerbuilder/SQL Windows/Delphi?? The potential for New Era should be in the hundred thousands. (Ref. below.) I also believe Informix had a very high percentage (50%???) of their income from tools in the haydays of 4GL. You can make money from tools. > What I am getting at is that the cost > for the tool is not really that high. Yes, it is high for a home user. > But they are not the ones Informix is after. Why not, with a special version (without application partioning and perhaps some other stuff left out). This could create volume with potentially good earnings. ("If you loose on every sale, make it up in the volume" is a *good* american tradition because it's real.) "Home user" isn't the right market, it's the small developers (1 person and up) using it for professional purposes. There are realy many of these. > NewEra is a very good tool, Yes > it does things you can do in VB, Powerbuilder, and Delphi. Yes exactly. That is why a version can easily be sold in high volume in direct competition. With the facelift/enhancements you describe (below) it will win hands down. The point is you could then develop simple, small applications, but be sertain there is no limit in the tool for growth. I know of hardly anyone who wouldn't appreciate this enough to select it instead of these limited tools. This is *the* argument why Informix can make it big in the tools market if they want to (and I think they do). > You really > need to compare the tool to Jam6 and Uniface. Once you do that you will > see the prices are about the same. I am not among the once who complain about the price of the full tool. I simply say there should be a volume version also, with a low price (and no runtime price except for connectivity software to server databases (ODBC or I-Net)). > There is only a few things wrong with > NewEra. 1) It needs a face lift. I would like to see it act more like > Delphi. 2) They need to make it easy to do a master detailed screen. I > heard this is coming. 3) It needs to be able to run on other OS's. Like > OS/2 even in a win-os2 session. Most developers don't like using windows > because it locks up way to much. Either they are using NT, XWindows, or > OS/2. I am currently using OS/2. Informix really needs to get on the > stick here. All the other big Data Base co. are supporting OS/2. But > Informix in their wisdom think that IBM is going to kill OS/2. How long > have we been hearing that story? Since MircoSoft and IBM split up, and > OS/2 is still here. My point is that Informix should not close > themselves in a corner. And to me that is what they are doing. > Agreed. (NT is very important. So is SCO, and probably OS/2) + a forth point of course is not only a face lift in the tool (important) but in what you can make, but that is covered before. Why this talk about volume? To us volume is realy important so we aren't alone in the world using the tool. We need to be able to employ programmers. We need people who know the tool and don't need a lot of education to come up to speed. This may be less of a problem in the US than here in Europa as we need volume within small countries. Most other companies I have talked to see this the same way. They don't want to start using New Era without an expectation that many others will also do so. Also the volume can create higher income for Informix on the tool, an important issue. The tool will also get written and talked about with high volume. Important both for the value for us as developers and for Informix as a way of marketing it. The volume also helps a lot on the availability of class libraries, case tool interfaces and all other types of tools around the product. The people making these need to earn money to be interested, and they can't charge to high prices for us to be interested - volume is a must. Nils.Myklebust@ccmail.telemax.no NM-data, Dalsbergstien 7, N-0170 Oslo, Norway My opinions are those of my company