Re: Informix Buyout
"James McGovern" <mcgovej@commandsys.com> wrote: :I have heard from an insider that Microsoft is planning on purchasing :Informix and will be making their final decision on friday. I will post :information here, when I learn more... That would be a catastrophe for the database industry as well as the general software industry. We all depend on powerful companies outside of Microsoft to give them serious competition. Despite their current problems Informix is alive and well and have a technology that could potentially be used to gain a very significant marketshare in the database market if handled well. This may of course be interesting enough for Microsoft, but they are also moving themselves with the release of SQL Server ver. 7.0 It would be strange for Microsoft to take over a company that is so strong in the Unix market. They wouldn't be able to, and probably not want to, handle that part and would have to more or less write it off. Not a small thing with a capitalized value of over US$ 1 billion and a probable price far above that. I don't quite see anyone that could buy Informix. Non of the other database companies would gain enough from it, IBM would only confuse customers, Netscape probably isn't large enough to handle it. May be CA. Although they would get problems with Ingres and probably have to write that off they have done similar things before. Shure hope they don't think about it. From the shareholders point of view there is no need to sell Informix (unless they get a very good price). They are so strong that they could earn much more by retaining it as a separate company. Whether the management shuffles and other things Informix are currently doing are enough to get them back on track fast is something we will have to wait and see. If I where Sun, IBM, HP and a few others I would buy Informix stock to avoide a Microsoft buyout if there where any danger. Nils.Myklebust@idg.no NM Data AS, P.O.Box 9090 Gronland, N-0133 Oslo, Norway My opinions are those of my company The Informix FAQ is at http://www.iiug.org