Riddle me this...

Adaptec just announced a new raid controller card. It has an SSD attached for speeding up cached data. The full article can be found here: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/09/09/adaptec_maxiq/ And the neat thing is that its application independent. Here's a quote about its target audience... "The focussed app areas include SQL, MySQL, virtual environments and web servers. Adaptec says its controller strategy going forward revolves around data conditioning: doing things with data in the I/O path between a server host's memory and the disk drives which an Adaptec controller manages. The company talks of high-performance hybrid arrays, a mix of controller flash cache and SAS and SATA disk drives. This is the first MaxIQ module and others will follow." I guess that IBM is too focused on customers that purchase their very large and expensive P Series boxes. I mean there's a very large population of companies that build their own 'white boxes' with off the shelf components, rather than spending $$$ on name brand hardware. I forget whom IBM is 'targeting' their 'marketing' message to. I mean after all, the larger brand is trying to sell their 'smurt innovations' campaign which really focuses on selling a bunch of Global Service people to make reports on things that we already know and add no real value. But that's besides the point. The point is that for IDS to grow, not only does IBM have to start pushing a real marketing message, but also building the relationships with their partners and ISVs. No offense, but how many times have we seen "I'm stuck with using 9.4 which I know is no longer supported, but its the last release my ERP vendor supports IDS on..." Now who's fault is that? The customer? The ERP vendor? Or IBM's former DB2 er Information Management's leader? BTW, you can really solve a lot of customer's problems on smaller boxes. Applications which 10 years ago would have required a large midrange box can now be handled by a pizza box w 2.5" SAS drives. on the front side. This isn't a niche, but pretty much mainstream SMB shops. Wake up IBM and smell the friggin coffee! IDS is the perfect product to square off against SQLServer and MySQL. Only IBMers outside of the lab doesn't know it exists. But hey! What do I know? ;-) -G PS. Yes, I do know of a couple of sales reps in the field that sell IDS. I also know of a couple of reps who used to sell IDS over DB2 and they now work for Oracle. ;-) _________________________________________________________________ Windows Live: Keep your friends up to date with what you do online. http://windowslive.com/Campaign/SocialNetworking?ocid=PID23285::T:WLMTAGL:ON:WL:en-US:SI_SB_online:082009