Re: Yet another stellar example of IBM's IM marketing and sales in action...
On 3 Sep., 20:28, "Captain Pedantic" <theharlequi...@hotmail.com> wrote: > "eherber" <e...@herber-consulting.de> wrote in message > > news:31506c15-d806-4c1a-8860-9dfa176a6360@y12g2000prb.googlegroups.com... > On 3 Sep., 14:53, Ian Michael Gumby <im_gu...@hotmail.com> wrote: > > >> This says it all. While IBM tells the loyal Informix community one story > >> it tells the rest of the world a different story. We might call it "lip > >> services" ... Informix is NOT part of the strategy [or] it is ONLY part > >> of the strategy as long as IBM talks to the Informix community ... Kill > >> Informix or promote Informix, IBM. > > Well, let's think about this. Suppose for a minute that IBM's *actual* > inclination is to kill Informix. Would it actually do so immediately? > No, because Informix continues to generate tens, maybe low hundreds, of > millions of dollars of revenue each year. Informix sites have proved > themselves to be resistant to a remarkable degree to IBM's attempts to > convert them to DB2 (has there ever been a conversion, aside from Finnish > elevator company Kone?). But, Informix remains a "cash cow". So, sensible > managers will continue to milk the cow until its yield drops below some > level beneath which it's counter-productive to keep milking. The optimal > way to prolong the yield is to try to minimise the rate of attrition. A > strategy of targeting all promotion and advertising at the existing client > base, plus introduction of new features, is the optimal way to minimise > attrition. > > And, in fact, this is exactly what IBM is doing. Everything IBM does points > towards it having adopted a "cash cow" strategy. And actually, it's > executing it very well. > > You might think that the strategy itself is bollocks. You might observe > that DB2 continues to be slaughtered in the LUW marketplace. You might > believe that Informix could compete far better in LUW space than a product > indelibly associated as a mainframe product. But, the bus has left the > station. The decision was made long, long ago. Even I realise now that it > will never be reversed. Captain, your analysis sounds well-founded and is probably not that far away from the truth. I share your opinion as well as at least some of Gumby's statements from the past. I spoke with different people from the Informix community during the last couple of weeks and there is a huge scepticism regarding IBM's promises about the future of Informix. IBM already lost a lot of trust in the community due to their consecutive ignorance when it comes to market Informix seriously. Rumours from different trusted sources told me that Informix wasn't even mentioned during a recent IBM internal sales training. The whole focus was on migrating Oracle and Sybase customers to DB2 LUW. Nothing about Informix. Funny, didn't IBM promised to educate their own sales force on Informix ? Another rumour is that the cover story of the upcoming IBM Information Management magazine will be about the same topic (Migrating to DB2). That is the IM magazine issue that will be distributed to thousands of participants during IBM's IOD event in October. If that is true, then it is a heavy slap in the face of the loyal Informix community as the focus in fall should be on the upcoming Informix Panther release and not on DB2 ! In fact it is not only a "heavy slap" for the Informix community, it is a k.o. for all the promises IBM delivered at the beginning of the Panther year. I've already taken one consequence: http://www.informix-zone.com/planetids-offline The first rumour has already become reality as the sales workshop is over. But IBM has still time to proof the second rumour wrong. Hopefully they recognize that there is no time left for further lip services.