Why IBM will continue to fail in their 'Stealth' marketing attempts.

Eric found the smarter question web site. Which claims to be 'sponsored' by IBM, yet the views and opinions on the site don't necessarily reflect those of IBM. If you dig in to the site, the site is owned by an anonymous group. Shock! (Ok Mock Shock) The site is registered through a domain name registrar that cloaks the ownership and contact information of the site and is based out of Australia. But for all of their protests, anyone who knows IBM knows that their hands are all over this site. The vids, the articles, the follow up twitter links on the site about the site. All in an effort to attempt to create marketing buzz about something which really isn't buzz worthy. I ran in to a friend shortly after an IBM Information Management marketing event here in Chicago. My friend was embarrassed by the quality of the marketing efforts. As an attendee, I sat through the key note speaker, bored to tears, recognizing maybe 15 customers with the bulk of the people present as IBM staff. (I kid you not.) The point is that IBM's IM Marketing team makes Informix's former marketing team look like a brain trust. So we look at the site Eric found. Any questions answered? Not by anyone from IBM with the one exception of Martin. I posted my comments freely. No moderators. The point is that you can ask smart questions about Informix however since its not an IBM vs Oracle question, it won't get answered. At the same time... when someone does ask an IBM vs Oracle question about a product that isn't Informix... well it doesn't get answered either. (The lights are on... but no one is home...) In a nutshell, IBM's Marketing attempt to create buzz failed miserably on so many levels, its a wonder how they manage to keep their jobs. Oh wait. I forgot, this is IBM where only in Sales do they constantly churn the S&D team such that unless you are attached to the client rep as a direct dotted line report, they don't trust you because you'll be moved to somewhere else next year and they have a huge quota of IBM shite to sell... focusing on services.... Marketing types only leave the coop when they realize that they will have to wait for some incompetent boob up the ladder either falls off or retires.... The bigger problem is that you have people in Marketing who don't understand the Information Management industry. Who cares about IBM vs Oracle in the traditional space? No one. All eyes are on Big Data. Just ask Neteeza execs about a mandate from a certain government agency. ;-) So why doesn't Jerry K and his guys actually do something interesting? I mean its only been a year or so since I mentioned some ideas about tying Informix in to Big Data. Some of these ideas are in production at DataStax (Brisk) and EMC (Greenplum). The truth is that until IBM gets their heads out of their collective arse, take a shower to clean off that brown ring, and start to be proactive and think about their products and their customers, they will continue to fail. In all of this... why does it hurt you the Informix user? Simple. As IBM continues to fail, it costs them money. That's the money that could have gone in to R&D and production of extensions to Informix that makes it relevant to today's customers. Oh and one last free clue. IBM added column oriented data types to DB2 prior to Informix. The sad truth is that it would have been easier to add extensibility to Informix and then port it to DB2. Too many senior execs are sitting around totally clueless trying to protect their jobs as they get closer to retirement. Gone are the days where a senior IBM exec can fly the coop and land in a cushy job. Seems the prior crop of senior execs who left IBM failed and the culture of start ups breeds better leaders. But hey, what do I know? Its not like I've run my own gig, done the corporate thing in sales or anything. Oh wait. I did. :-P Peace out! -G