Re: Informix: Please buy Borland

On Wed, 26 Feb 1997 13:44:15 GMT, Nils.Myklebust@idg.no (Nils Myklebust) wrote: >Another option is to b[u]y Symantec. I strongly disagree with all this advice that Informix should buy 4GL-vendor X or Y. First of all, for the RDBMS company, ownership of a 4GL is a distraction from the very difficult business of being an RDBMS leader. Many people think this is precisely what happened to Sybase -- it became distracted from its core business. Secondly, I think that being owned by an RDBMS company is a kiss-of-death for a 4GL company. One important reason that influences 4GL purchasing decisions is whether the 4GL provides excellent support for all major RDBMSes. Only then does the purchasing company have the option of later switching (or mixing and matching) databases if it wishes. Third, Informix has enough of a job getting its sales and marketing effort straightened out quickly -- very quickly -- lest it lose the brief advantage it has in several of its recently acquired or developed DBMS technologies. Management is also distracted presently by the defection of a major group of developers to Oracle and the lawsuit it is pursuing in the wake of this. The database is the company's core competency, not the 4GL. Informix should be forming very strong alliances with ALL the leading 4GL and database driver vendors, especially the Java ones. This is where Informix historically has been at a disadvantage vis-a-vis Sybase, Oracle, and Microsoft, namely, in mainstream third-party support. As far as technical direction goes, I would like to see Informix become the leader in implementing Dr. Codd's specifications in "The Relational Model for Database Management: Version 2." --- Richard A. Schulman // For email reply, be sure to remove the two anti-spamming // asterisks that will appear in the "to" field of your reply.