IIUG - Advocacy Program Announcement

Influence Informix's Product Direction - Participate in the IIUG Advocacy Program As Informix continues its transformation into a new and improved company, they have been coming to the IIUG to solicite opinions and insights from those who use their products every day. We want to be able to accurately represent your views on issues ranging from licensing fees and definitions of a user in a web-enabled world to product enhancements. Have you ever wished you could tell Informix how to position their products and marketing messages so it would be more effective? Informix has asked us to give them feedback. But we can't do it without *you!* We need to have your insight and opinions. To that end, the IIUG Advocacy Program has created several committees focusing on specific areas of interest. For example, Lester Knutsen (lester@access.digex.net) is chairing a discussion surrounding Informix's efforts in administration and performance monitoring tools. Frank Catrine (frankc@glasscity.net) is leading the discussion on engine related issues that include the future of the WorkGroup Edition, licensing and user issues, and feature enhancements. The General Business Issues committee is helping Informix craft new marketing messages as they begin to rebuild their advertising and marketing programs as well as other critical issues. With the renewed investment by Informix in the 4GL family of products and the release of Dynamic-4GL, there is also an opportunity to discuss potential changes and enhancements to the products. The Advocacy Program has already produced what some have called "the most significant event in computing this year": an Informix port to the Linux operating system. The crucial point to note is that the Linux community was too diffuse to justify the attention of any single region within Informix's sales structure; it took the focus of the IIUG Advocacy Program to raise their message and guide the porting effort to a successful conclusion. The Linux committee is still the most active part of the Advocacy Program. You can contact Marco Greco (marco@informix.com) to become a part of this exciting frontier. To get involved in these, or any of the other IIUG Advocacy Program sub-committees, please contact the chairs listed in this message or see our web page to get more information. It can be found at http://www.iiug.org/advocacy/advocacy_top.html I appreciate those who have become involved to this point in this effort and hope you will realize what a great opportunity this is to influence Informix's direction and strategy. Carlton Doe Director, IIUG Advocacy Program carlton@iiug.org