Re: IIUG - Linux and Informix

Marco Greco wrote: > > Carlton, > The IIUG cannot stop here, and the ask the expert session at the IWUC is > not the right place to raise the issue. > > To start with, many of us will not be there (The good news: I won't go. The > bad: Tim will, and I trust him to speak for me, too :-). Next, this is not a > technical issue, but a commercial one. ( Is it bad that I go? :-) I'm thinking of getting a refund actually. I really don't know if the conference will have much for me. Anyway, It's not the right place for this discussion, which could detract from the original intent of the forum. And the forum would detract from this issue. Actually as Nils, Marco and others have pointed out, these issues. Well, maybe more, but consider these: 1. Developer support 2. Small systems support 3. Linux viability in and of its' own merit, having value by itself. > As for waiting a couple of month before discussing the issue, well it could > just be too late, then. Apparently Informix can somehow wait. For what I don't know. Many all that cash has gone to their heads. It's a shame. > Informix should do something *now*, and something eclatant. The IWUC should be > a moment in which Informix tries to capture the attention of new and old > customers, with new and appealing announcements. Not exactly the appropriate > climax, right now: with this kind of "chiaro di luna" (moonlight), as they say > in Catania, I strongly doubt that the horde of prospective customers Informix > claims will attend the conference actually will. I have mentioned this to others off-line, I'll say it here. It appears as if Informix is intentionally stonewalling, and sandbagging, to devalue the company enough for a buy-out. At the lethargic pace Informix is moving, either one of two things could happen: 1. They want to bungle their business up so bad to get somebody else to buy it, or 2. They have the equivalent of a nuclear bomb in some technology product they've not yet announced. Given the history of Informix over the past couple of years, I'd say it's just been plain bungling of the business, and missing the market. Universal Server was supposed to be the big bomb, but unfortunately it follows on the heels of New Era as another great dud. Now, with lawsuits looming, and the current press releases, it appears as if it's time to hide, lay low, and hope nothing else goes wrong. I laud them highly for the forward thinking, developing Universal Server, but not at the expense of the current market. And now hiding behind corpspeak, hoping to buy time till after the conference. Somebody please tell me: Am I nuts or what? The marketplace speaks for itself. Forget my ramblings if you will, but consider the realities of the market. Have I spoken so out of line, so out on a broken limb, as to require guidance? ( Billy or Mark don't answer that! :-) I know what your answer is ) I like others have watched patiently as New Era has gone off with a dull thud, now we have to sit by and take Universal Server, at the usurous pricing, and just go with it. In the meantime, we are left without any alternative migration to current platforms for the older, but perhaps wiser, products, like 4GL, and possibly even the older engines... Imagine the current realities if we get Universal Server: If the risk to the developer community, and by that I mean people and companies who take software, and make money with it, either through direct or indirect means, is low enough, then Universal Server will make it. OnLine 7.x would have the same chance if given wide-spread distribution. Give me an incentive to use your products to make money. Don't assume you have an endless supply of companies to lay down for your pricing, this will backfire. By cutting out the small business market, Informix will open up the floodgates for the competition. Microsoft has made a science of creating a low-risk buy-off of their products. What are you doing Informix? Look at what your competitors are doing, and do better than them. Do a search on dejanews, and look at what I said about New Era. You didn't think Trojan Horse as Microsoft has done. Who won? If a corporation buys US, what are they going to do about getting people to use and support it? Where do they draw talent from to support it? Who they gonna call? And who is going to just run out and get training for it? At the current pricing? OK , the corporate faithful. But what about the rest of us. > Also, as Nils eloquently pointed out in his reply to your previous posting, > the issue of Linux ports and Informix turning it's back to the low end market > (irrespective of the port) are two separate issues. > This is true. I should be as clear on that but have not been. It's been so easy for me to see that if you distribute your product to as wide an audience as possible, you will gain market share. But even without the port to Linux, Informix still owes developers and small markets at large an explanation why they've abandoned this segment of business. Two separate issues, development support, and small business marketing support. This does not mean Linux is to be ignored. The market potential is huge. Informix owes the smaller developer easy access to the products at reasonable prices, and in a timely fashion. They owe everyone in development cooperative support, where the vendor cooperates with small developers, and doesn't try to cut them out of the market. Informix needs to think about their business plan--it too needs to scale as much as the engine or it will not fly much longer. They need to stop putting their consultants first, and build coalitions with regional consultants. By building true "channel partners" they will be able to indirectly fend off the competition. Informix, quit acting like you don't need developers. Think about the Informix University. It's time has come. > I, like Nils, have a big app (used to run a radiotherapy department, as you > may guess) written using 4gl, and have chosen Informix some 8 years ago since > they were the best database on the low-end market (Just think about this: the > average RT department in Italy could do with only 8 users, a big one with 16) > and could scale very well at the high end. Informix has decided to throw 4gl > in the dust-bin (mistake #1) and decided to make the low end market pay > Informix products thru the nose (mistake #2) as a result, small installations > are not buying Informix products. > To be more clear, we are the only RT department in Italy using Informix > products. Others (Including the *Universita` Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, the > Pope's private clinic*) have seen my product, have said "Neat, how much do we > have to pay to have it here?", have heard the price and stuck to whatever they > had! (there's even a site using filing assistant, no kidding) > We will not upgrade to OnLine 7. > > In the early nineties, the market was full of small developers using Informix > products who would produce and sell applications to small clients, enhancing > Informix sales. At these prices, this will not come back, and Informix will > even loose the support and upgrades i