Re: Pilgrim's progress at the medicine show

Tim Schaefer (tschaefe@gate.net) wrote: [ stuff deleted ] : : You have Dynamic Scalable Architecture, why not Dynamic Scalable Pricing? : >Dynamic Scalable Pricing is *EXACTLY* what Phil would *LOVE* to do. : Then why doesn't he just do it, like Nike would say. Because he can't predict the results accurtely enough to justify the risk. [ stuff deleted ] : >Now, as you will no doubt immediately realise, Phil might not be too : >upset by your squeals, but he sure as h*** doesn't want to have to deal : >with such squeals coming from Lockheed, Boeing, Citibank, Uncle Sam, : >Hyatt and their ilk! : Which way? That it costs too much or too little? The smart person in Either way! But I think you will find that one way doesn't generate squeals. :-) : MIS that can grasp what client/server is all about is going to have : enough business sense to buy HIGH QUALITY, LOW COST, CLEARLY DEFINED : products, knowing full well the life of the products he/she will be : buying today may have only a 6-8-month life span. Even shareware : products are getting out of hand. Every time I turn around a new : release of a shareware product comes out even better than the last one. : Thank God I didn't spend a lot of money on the last release! : >I can remember similar complaints and incredulity about I-4GL pricing : >back in '86. : Yeah, and there wasn't much to choose from either. : >All right, you can argue that I-4GL never became more than a niche : >product compared to COBOL, but I wouldn't mind having earnt even a tiny : >royalty percentage on it! : Earnings on COBOL or 4GL? : :-) Either! : >I don't think Phil expects or intends that NewEra would obliterate VB : >(and certainly not VC++, as somebody on the original thread seemed to : >think!). I doubt that he feels that it needs to. : Since when would a 'CEO of the year' want to be in second place? No, I But he is in second place. To Oracle (not Microsoft). (Actually you might argue that he's in third place, but that will change pretty soon). : think once INFORMIX really gets a grasp on the market they'll see that : it's a fast game where you keep moving or die. If you apply scalability : to my business, it's the same, I either move quickly or I die. And I : apply prudent spending whenever possible. Or I don't eat. This is a : market where the volley you launch can make or break you. : >There will always be people out there that can see the difference : >between a socket set and a set of spanners and are prepared to accept : >that they can be priced differently. And there will also be plenty of : >people that buy both!. : : Look at the Trojan Horse marketing strategy of Microsoft and you can't go : : wrong. : >Yet how many of the companies that followed that advice can you name, or : >even remember? : Well since you mentioned it, plenty. Sears has sold a LOT of tools with : scalable pricing in mind. Volkswagen was founded on it. AT&T uses it all : the time. Henry Ford did it. Thomas Edison went nuts with it. Chrysler : came back from the dead with it. DEC is coming back with it. And now Bill : Gates will bury UNIX with it. Sorry you misunderstand me. I meant those that had attempted it against Microsoft, which is what you were advocating. : >Informix' blackest period financially was when they were trying to copy : >Oracle. : I don't remember this, but if you say so. I think they're trying to copy : Oracle NOW, but who's keeping track. : >Coincidence? Maybe, maybe not. IMHO They got back on track by : >concentrating on their own strengths, not by trying to emulate someone : >elses. : Well, speaking of Oracle, don't they charge a bit much for their products? Yup. Hasn't done them too much harm, has it? : And what's with the INFORMIX/VC++ link? Isn't that riding Microsoft's : coattails a bit? Or a concession? No, it's just common sense. If you need a compiler get it from a compiler vendor not a database vendor. : INFORMIX may well be saying they don't want to reach a broad market anymore. : They confused me with New Era. I thought it was going to be a product that : would kill PowerBuilder, or Gupta, but we know that ain't gonna happen. :-) I don't know that. Gupta's dying, PowerSoft has been gobbled up, Informix looks healthy. : The video tape and demo diskette showed stuff that looked a lot like the : PowerBuilder stuff. I must not have too much on the ball. If it looks, : walks and quacks like a duck, isn't it a duck? Not necessarily. Could be a toy duck! Or maybe it's a real duck, and the one you'd been calling a duck was really the toy! : Don't ask me to support a New Era app. I can't afford to learn it. It won't : be mainstream enough to mess with anyway. Just a nice toy. But I will be : available for Microsoft/Borland/Other solutions. These are the companies that : brought us PC apps we used to chuckle over. PC programmers used to show me : their great looking apps till I asked how many they could run at one time. : That shut 'em up. Now multi-tasking is on the desktop. Guess who's laughing : now... Not the guys who tried going mission-critical with that stuff! : BTW, you have a great looking pyramid in your sig...it's almost 3D. Do Pyramid : machines run Windows NT? They might have to. :-) We're MIPS ABI so it's a non-issue. :-) However we can't afford to support it unless it becomes industrial strength. That's still 5 or 6 years away, by which time Microsoft will have obsoleted it and replaced it with their latest wheeze. : Oh, just got my BYTE Special Report on C/S. Hey look, there's a Watcom add : showing an UNLIMITED user license for their data base at $4995.00, 6-user : license for just $795.00. And they boast "Don't let the price fool you.". : Who said this market doesn't care about price? Sure. That's why Watcom has a larger database share than Informix isn't it.! : The revolution continues... But some of us try to learn from the cycles, not keep revolving round and round at Uncle Bill's whim. One day this industry will grow up, but don't hold your breath! -- graeme -- Disclaimer: The author's opinions are his own, and not necessarily those of Pyramid Technology Ltd. or Pyramid Technology Inc. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- -m------- Graeme Sargent Voice: +44 (0)252 373035 ---mmm----- Senior Database Consultant Fax : +44 (0)252 373135 -----mmmmm--- Pyramid Technology Ltd. Telex: Tell who??? -------mmmmmmm- Farnborough, Hants GU14 7PL Email: graeme@pyra.co.uk --------------------------------------------------------------------------- We have the technology. The tricky bit is learning how to use it.