Re: Informix Shares

ifriedman@hotmail.com wrote: :I am considering purchasing Informix shares on NASDAQ. I am basing my decision :on the following info: :(1) The database market is supposed to grow at some 30% yearly for the next :few years :(2) The data warehousing market is supposed to grow as rapidly :(3) Informix is selling at a fairly low price w/r/t its 52 week high, and, : as far as I remember, a reasonable P/E ratio. (23 or so?) :A few questions: :- Is Informix's market share increasing vis-a-vis Oracle, Sybase, etc..? Against Sybase for sure. Sybase is in enough trouble right now to be a doubtfull buy. I don't remember the growth rate of Oracle right now, but it should be easy enough to find out. :- Why did Informix fall from some $36 to $22 this year? What is just one case of :earnings not living up to expectations, or are there other problems? The major "problem" I think where that several analysts where doubtfull as to whether Informix could pull off the integration of the Illustra engine/functionallity into the Informix DSA architecture. I think the analysts are wrong, but that should simply add to anyones oportunities that are willing to bet on it. They do have another problem in that tools sales have fallen off. Informix may have any number of explanations for this themselves. The basic reason seems however to be that their new development tool (NewEra) haven't lived up to most peoples expectations. They still have a long way to go here. The release of ver. 3.0 (in december this year) may show whether they are moving in the right direction (they probably are) and whether they can move fast enough (I am not sure they can, but still hope). :- Is Informix becoming the data-base of choice for data warehousing? Well, many now have understood that they have a much better technology than Oracle. (Sybase is more or less out of this picture for the time beeing due to technological problems.) Oracle is however a master at marketing and they have achieved a sort of "I can't loose my job if I buy Oracle" stature. This is sad. However Informix have also become much better than they where at marketing, but still have a way to go. :- Any other opinions w/r/t Informix or its competitors such as Oracle? The one major issue for Informix is to get their new Universal Server out the door. If this is well implemented it is more than an evolution of database engines. For professional users it's a dream come true - if it works well. Oracle is far behind on this, and Sybase and Microsoft hardly have anything in this direction at all. This can give Informix a major thrust in the market. There are however some caveats: Informix may be tempted at increasing the price of their Universal Server engine as compared to the current prices. That would be a *major* error to comitt. They need to understand that market penetration and volume is still very important for them. They must of course increase total sales as well as earnings also, but they have to find a way to do that without high prices. Volume is of course the solution. The other major caveat (that is directly linked to the volume problem) is ease of use and integration of the database engine into a larger environement. Currently they have problems here that they do not even fully understand. Particularly integeration with MS Windows based applications is a sore point. The main thing they don't understand is how easy it have to be to install new users and start using the engine from an MS Windows based PC, and equally how easy further support of such users have to be. They also have security problems. The fact that their competitors, appart from Microsoft, aren't much better in this type of integration isn't very helpfull here. These problems however aren't big enough to set them back significantly right now. If they don't grasp them at a top management level soon, and start solving them it may hurt them significantly in less than a year from now. :Thanks, :Ishay :----------------------------------------------------------------------- :This article was posted to Usenet via the Posting Service at Deja News: :http://www.dejanews.com/ [Search, Post, and Read Usenet News!] 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