I wonder what IBM will do now?

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/09/02/oracle_sun_sparc_preview/ Yeah sports fans. If you have been keeping score, or looking at benchmarks, you'll notice that IBM doesn't do TPC-C benchmarks using IDS. Or any benchmarks for that matter. Now that Sun is being bought by Oracle, Oracle is now going to wage war on IBM by showing that Oracle on Sun is much better than DB2 on IBM hardware. (As if anyone really runs DB2 not on IBM hardware... ;-) So riddle me this ... IBM has a muddled 'go to marketing' message. At one time, they said IDS == OLTP. DB2 == DW. This has changed overtime because IDS is getting DW capabilities. There are a couple of reasons for this but that isn't the point. At the beginning of the year, good ol Jerry Keesee whipped out a new diagram in his first Informix 'chat with the lab' of the year. His point was that in the unlocked version of the slide, the IBM sales rep could change the image to present either IDS or DB2 based upon the target audience. (Ah yes, reusability at its best. ;-) So while IBM has taken their eye off their competitive markets and spent more time shifting their back office and non-sales work to 'lower cost' countries, Oracle was ramping up their competitive marketing. This serves two purposes. 1) Further entrenching their position in IBM's white space. 2) Further marginalizing the IBM brand to be 'blue stack only'. The second being more dangerous. Congrats IBM on a job well done. Let me guess. IBM's response will be to wage war by building a massive multi-million dollar box and put DB2 on it, regardless if IDS is actually a better OLTP performer. Lets not even talk about TPC-E because well, that's another embarrassing sore point for IBM. ;-) BTW, one nice thing about spending time on benchmarking is that one gets to see how products perform under load. You know, like a b-tree index where the index key isn't unique and in a multi-million row table, the indexed column could have 10,000+ rows with the same index value. (Gee like that *never* happens in the real world, right?) So while Clive and I will be tossing barbs at each other, I wonder if anyone will seriously contemplate how daft IBM really is when it comes to marketing/sales strategy and positioning. No offense Jerry Keesee and guys in the lab, but if you build a really great product, but you can't market it worth shit, no one will come. But hey! What do I know? I'm just an old codger looking for a source to buy Black Adder Single Malts. ;-) -G _________________________________________________________________ Windows Live: Make it easier for your friends to see what you’re up to on Facebook. http://windowslive.com/Campaign/SocialNetworking?ocid=PID23285::T:WLMTAGL:ON:WL:en-US:SI_SB_facebook:082009

On 2 sep, 22:09, Ian Michael Gumby <im_gu...@hotmail.com> wrote: > http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/09/02/oracle_sun_sparc_preview/ > > Yeah sports fans. If you have been keeping score, or looking at benchmarks, you'll notice that IBM doesn't do TPC-C benchmarks using IDS. Or any benchmarks for that matter. > > Now that Sun is being bought by Oracle, Oracle is now going to wage war on IBM  by showing that Oracle on Sun is much better than DB2 on IBM hardware. (As if anyone really runs DB2 not on IBM hardware... ;-) > > So riddle me this ... > > IBM has a muddled 'go to marketing' message. At one time, they said IDS == OLTP. DB2 == DW. This has changed overtime because IDS is getting DW capabilities. There are a couple of reasons for this but that isn't the point. > > At the beginning of the year, good ol Jerry Keesee whipped out a new diagram in his first Informix 'chat with the lab' of the year. His point was that in the unlocked version of the slide, the IBM sales rep could change the image to present either IDS or DB2 based upon the target audience. (Ah yes, reusability at its best. ;-) > > So while IBM has taken their eye off their competitive markets and spent more time shifting their back office and non-sales work to 'lower cost' countries, Oracle was ramping up their competitive marketing. This serves two purposes. 1) Further entrenching their position in IBM's white space. 2) Further marginalizing the IBM brand to be 'blue stack only'. The second being more dangerous. > > Congrats IBM on a job well done. > > Let me guess. IBM's response will be to wage war by building a massive multi-million dollar box and put DB2 on it, regardless if IDS is actually a better OLTP performer. Lets not even talk about TPC-E because well, that's another embarrassing sore point for IBM. ;-) > > BTW, one nice thing about spending time on benchmarking is that one gets to see how products perform under load. > You know, like a b-tree index where the index key isn't unique and in a multi-million row table, the indexed column could have 10,000+ rows with the same index value. (Gee like that *never* happens in the real world, right?) > > So while Clive and I will be tossing barbs at each other, I wonder if anyone will seriously contemplate how daft IBM really is when it comes to marketing/sales strategy and positioning. No offense Jerry Keesee and guys in the lab, but if you build a really great product, but you can't market it worth shit, no one will come. > > But hey! What do I know? > I'm just an old codger looking for a source to buy Black Adder Single Malts. ;-) > > -G > > _________________________________________________________________ > Windows Live: Make it easier for your friends to see what you’re up to on Facebook.http://windowslive.com/Campaign/SocialNetworking?ocid=PID23285::T:WLM... Choose. Bernard Dhooghe PS: Mieux vaut un bon argument que deux meilleurs (Tristan Bernard).

On 2 Sep., 22:09, Ian Michael Gumby <im_gu...@hotmail.com> wrote: > http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/09/02/oracle_sun_sparc_preview/ > > Yeah sports fans. If you have been keeping score, or looking at benchmarks, you'll notice that IBM doesn't do TPC-C benchmarks using IDS. Or any benchmarks for that matter. > > Now that Sun is being bought by Oracle, Oracle is now going to wage war on IBM  by showing that Oracle on Sun is much better than DB2 on IBM hardware. (As if anyone really runs DB2 not on IBM hardware... ;-) > > So riddle me this ... > > IBM has a muddled 'go to marketing' message. At one time, they said IDS == OLTP. DB2 == DW. This has changed overtime because IDS is getting DW capabilities. There are a couple of reasons for this but that isn't the point. > > At the beginning of the year, good ol Jerry Keesee whipped out a new diagram in his first Informix 'chat with the lab' of the year. His point was that in the unlocked version of the slide, the IBM sales rep could change the image to present either IDS or DB2 based upon the target audience. (Ah yes, reusability at its best. ;-) > > So while IBM has taken their eye off their competitive markets and spent more time shifting their back office and non-sales work to 'lower cost' countries, Oracle was ramping up their competitive marketing. This serves two purposes. 1) Further entrenching their position in IBM's white space. 2) Further marginalizing the IBM brand to be 'blue stack only'. The second being more dangerous. > > Congrats IBM on a job well done. > > Let me guess. IBM's response will be to wage war by building a massive multi-million dollar box and put DB2 on it, regardless if IDS is actually a better OLTP performer. Lets not even talk about TPC-E because well, that's another embarrassing sore point for IBM. ;-) > > BTW, one nice thing about spending time on benchmarking is that one gets to see how products perform under load. > You know, like a b-tree index where the index key isn't unique and in a multi-million row table, the indexed column could have 10,000+ rows with the same index value. (Gee like that *never* happens in the real world, right?) > > So while Clive and I will be tossing barbs at each other, I wonder if anyone will seriously contemplate how daft IBM really is when it comes to marketing/sales strategy and positioning. No offense Jerry Keesee and guys in the lab, but if you build a really great product, but you can't market it worth shit, no one will come. > > But hey! What do I know? > I'm just an old codger looking for a source to buy Black Adder Single Malts. ;-) > > -G > > _________________________________________________________________ > Windows Live: Make it easier for your friends to see what you’re up to on Facebook.http://windowslive.com/Campaign/SocialNetworking?ocid=PID23285::T:WLM... It is good to see that IBM invests the earned IDS money as part of the great "Smarter Planet" planet campaign instead of wasting it in a meaningless campaign like Oracle does :-) I'm confident that that IBM's way of doing marketing is so helpful for the many faithful Informix partners in the field and leads to many many new IDS customers. I bet that IBM has a smart IDS based internal data warehouse where they can exactly see the efficiency of their great campaign. So who cares about benchmark numbers as long as IBM (Marketing) makes this world a "Smarter Planet" :-)

> From: eric@herber-consulting.de > > It is good to see that IBM invests the earned IDS money as part of > the great "Smarter Planet" planet campaign instead of wasting it in > a meaningless campaign like Oracle does :-) I'm confident that > that IBM's way of doing marketing is so helpful for the many > faithful Informix partners in the field and leads to many many new IDS > customers. I bet that IBM has a smart IDS based internal data > warehouse where they can exactly see the efficiency of their great > campaign. > > So who cares about benchmark numbers as long as > IBM (Marketing) makes this world a "Smarter Planet" :-) I guess with budgets getting cut and people fear that they'll be next when it comes to IBM shipping their jobs off to "more margin induced labor force" countries. So the message is to not rock the boat. If IBM's overall brand is to market their "Smurt Planet" campaign, then I guess the minions assigned to each branch must do their share. Of course when you're dealing with OLTP and not so much a DW but an ODS, IDS should be the platform of choice. Of course IBM is a little late to the game. Take drinking water. In 1990-1 Nalco Chemical built a blue box that housed a 6809 controller whose job it was to monitor the drinking water and control the flow of Chlorine. Over time, this project was so successful, they added the capability to upload the data to a pc connected to the box via a serial port and to then accumulate the data within a local file. This lead to a network of devices that then uploaded the data to an Oracle database. Well you get the idea. So how safe is your drinking water? It depends. Who's providing your municipal water treatment with chemicals? But I digress. Anyone with half a brain would have know that infrastructure was important. IBM is only getting in to the game now because its visible and 'hot'. But hey! That's what marketing is for. Now IBM can profess to have expertise in getting millions of government funded dollars to do something that offers little to no value. That's Smurt government in work. Wouldn't it be better for all concerned if IBM stuck to their core business and marketed their products instead? Unless of course the idea would be to force customer to Oracle since their ERP companies no longer support IDS on anything later than 9.4x. Naw that would make too much sense. _________________________________________________________________ With Windows Live, you can organize, edit, and share your photos. http://www.windowslive.com/Desktop/PhotoGallery