Re: Major crackdown on Informix products/ports ?

Michael Segel (Mikey@NOSPAM.KingofMyDomain.MAPSON.Segel.com) wrote: : > We are currently emphasising the NT and are working on the release of a : > "personal edition" version of the engine. Both of these are targeting for : > small-end environments. While I can't speak for Bob, what I think he was : > trying to emphasize is that there has been some neglect to the XPS environments : > and performance issues in the past year with the IUS push. We are trying to : > address those issues. For instance, bench mark tests on 7.3 do indicate that : > there is a significant performance boost over 7.2. : > : > Madison Pruet : I take it that you work for Informix? : Then again here's a perfect example of Informix saying one thing and then doing the : exact opposite! I think what you mean is that Informix say's one thing and then does what it says. Madison has a good point. Informix has neglected the high end market w.r.t. exploiting what they know best. They have the fastest DB in the market, and more effort should go into exploiting that. They are committed to providing Informix on NT and low/mid range systems, but are not intent to compete with People like Microsoft in terms of dominating the desktop. This would not be possible as they own the desktop and write the rules. The latest fiasco with Netscape has shown what Microsoft can do. There is no reason why they won't resort to giving away versions of SQL server if they can make a larger margin on some other area of the solutions market. : On that program, Joe K. asked him point blank about his strategy. : Bob F. then outlined that Informix was not going to compete in the *commodity* : database market but will compete in specialized segments like datawarehousing which I think the keyword there was *compete*, not commodity. : he felt that they [Informix] had an advantage over its competitors. Namely Oracle. : If you visit Informix's web site, Finocchio even re-itereates this message, which : is what the original post was about. Which is why you had another opportunity to read it again and perhaps understand it better. : Informix is running around like a chicken with its head cut off! : No wonder Larry was so confident that they will make a 20% growth this quarter in : their core products! (Informix makes it sooo easy to sell FUD!) Larry is confident. It's because he has started to concentrate on flogging databases for a change instead of overhyped terminals. The market is not buying the crap he was trying to sell. They were interested in Oracle as a database as it did the job of a database. I believe that he tried to downplay this in order to leverage the database for services and ancillary products a la NC, N-Cube etc. N-Cube flopped, and the NC albeit a good idea has a niche which is not being positioned properly. Larry has no option but to go back to his bread and butter which was never in danger of running out. His initial statement that the database market was saturated only served to get people initially interested in those other products. When it was obvious that Informix and Sybase were still selling plenty of product to the market and providing a very good solution (thank you very much), his margin on hardware compared to the margin on software and associated spin-offs looked pretty glum. It also looked a load more unstable as his farcical demo's have unequivocally shown. Larry has done a U-Turn in the good old Bill Gates fashion of poo-pooing the internet and then embracing it with open arms. Bob's failing was that his statement was vague, not that it was incorrect. However, when you have an opportunity for a sound bite, it's important to get the majority of the information in. Qualifying every word for the pedants in the audience could take a bit too long. Jon Machtynger