End of an era.

With Mark Townsend gone... (Don't know why he didn't just subscribe to the IIUG mailing list) I guess I can say this without someone complaining that I'm promoting Oracle on an Informix site. :-) With the last two quarters, we can say good bye to an era of the IBM Informix pundits whispering that IDS has had 'double digit' growth. Oh sure you can blame the economy or just say 'all good things come to an end', but the truth is that IBM hasn't done enough to promote their products, and when they do promote their products, there tends to be more hype than substance. (If anyone was on the last IBM IM webinar, you'd understand. I was curious about how IBM was positioning Cognos for financial analytics. Since I'm back working in the financial sector, I was curious. Not only was the talk a snooze fest, but all hype and nothing of substance. The title was a bit of a misnomer because the focus was on 'profitability analysis' and even then, nothing concrete.) But I digress. The reason for the post is to yet again drill home IBM's inability to think past the current quarter's revenues. This short term thinking is due to IBM doing anything they can do to increase their margins on dropping revenues to record 'record' profits. Wall St is eating it up, but what that means is that when Sam P retires, IBM will be a sad shadow of its former self. I mean there's Marketing and then there's marketing. IBM is failing at both levels. There are those within the Informix community that ask for 'marketing' and didn't differentiate between Marketing or marketing. Actually they wanted Marketing, but would have been happy with marketing. The big 'M' in marketing denotes actually spending money and doing an agressive ad campaign. The little 'm' in marketing denotes doing things to market the product with out actually spending money on the big 'M' stuff. I could call Alyse P on the carpet for continually failing to do the things needed to do the marketing or sales related activities to improve the sales numbers. But then again, she's a woman 'exec' within IBM, so I guess I shouldn't hold her to the same standard as I would Jerry, Arvin the Marvin, Steve Mills,... you know that crowd. I mean heck in one weekend, a certain IIUG member warned Alyse about some trouble in a major FL account, and she was told that there was a lack of parity in the sales force between IT Specialists who knew DB2 and those that knew IDS. It was even told her on how she could increase the parity without expending a dime outside of the cost of the certification tests. Did she listen? No, apparently not. Yet she was promoted out of her then role as WW Informix Sales. We could also look at IBM's failed attempts at purchasing Sun. Whether you liked the deal or not, IBM needed it because IBM needed to expand in to their white space. Buying Sun would have done just that. But then again, IBM (Janet P) convinced SAP to *not* support IDS in their next release and IBM (Janet P) hoped that Informix/SAP customers would become DB2/SAP customers. Instead the bulk went to Oracle. (Wow! That was a swift move!) The real interesting thing is that we will continue to see a slide in Informix sales numbers. The 'double digit' growth wasn't due to 'net new IBM customers' but due to 'true ups' people getting off of 9.x and moving to 10.x or hopefully 11.x. To make things worse, IBM's IM is going to see tougher times with respect to revenue numbers. Remember for the past 2 years I've talked about DB2 mainframe migrations to distributed systems? That's right kiddies. IBM's big revenue numbers come from overpriced MIPs on the mainframe. Some customers are migrating to Oracle or SQLServer on distributed platforms. <Insert mock *shock* here>. IBM missed this opportunity because the mainframe is their *sacred cow*. It takes 2-5 years of migration effort to move mainframe apps to a distributed environment, depending on the customer, their funding and the complexity of their environment. Those customers are going to slowly shrink their MIPs which means that IBM's IM revenue numbers are going to take a hit. Of course since IBM doesn't break out details by platform... we'll never know the full extent of the damage. The net result is that less revenue means less money for R&D. This means tougher times for Informix within IBM. Despite the fast talk to the Informix faithful, IBM's actions speak louder than words. They say one thing, yet they do another. BTW, having some boob in MA calling existing Informix customers and BPs to tell them about the new DW functionality of IDS is akin to pissing on a fire. Yes you're putting water on the flame, but its no where near enough of an effort. You don't have to believe what I say, but at least 2 years from now, you can look through the archives and see this post. The point of this rant is that someone has to say that the emperor has no clothes. That is, someone has to point out the obvious fact that IBM is starting down a negative slope and that they need to start putting a plan of action in place. On a side note.... If I were to ask the FLM (first line manager) of the IM IT Specialists who in the Chicagoland area is running Informix... Do you think *she* knows? If I asked the same question of any of the S&D execs including the BUE, do you think they know? Realistically the senior execs like the BUE support all of IBM so knowing which customers run IDS is not really a fair question. The point is that the FLM should know. Especially since she and Rob now run the local user group. (I guess that this counts as their 'give back' to the community as part of the PBCs...) I know for a fact that they don't know. They could run a report from the AAS system, but that would mean calling a manager in support to do it for them. Even then, there's a couple of IBM customers and BPs that have operations here in Chicago, that aren't on their maps. But hey! I've missed the last couple of meetings. I mean, why would I want to sit through a presentation on IDS 11.x features for the nth time? -G _________________________________________________________________ Windows Live™ Hotmail®: Celebrate the moment with your favorite sports pics. Check it out. http://www.windowslive.com/Online/Hotmail/Campaign/QuickAdd?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_QA_HM_sports_photos_072009&cat=sports

On Jul 24, 7:53 am, Ian Michael Gumby <im_gu...@hotmail.com> wrote: > With Mark Townsend gone... (Don't know why he didn't just subscribe to the IIUG mailing list) I guess I can say this without someone complaining that I'm promoting Oracle on an Informix site. :-) > > With the last two quarters, we can say good bye to an era of the IBM Informix pundits whispering that IDS has had 'double digit' growth. Oh sure you can blame the economy or just say 'all good things come to an end', but the truth is that IBM hasn't done enough to promote their products, and when they do promote their products, there tends to be more hype than substance. > (If anyone was on the last IBM IM webinar, you'd understand. I was curious about how IBM was positioning Cognos for financial analytics. Since I'm back working in the financial sector, I was curious. Not only was the talk a snooze fest, but all hype and nothing of substance. The title was a bit of a misnomer because the focus was on 'profitability analysis' and even then, nothing concrete.) > > But I digress. > > The reason for the post is to yet again drill home IBM's inability to think past the current quarter's revenues. This short term thinking is due to IBM doing anything they can do to increase their margins on dropping revenues to record 'record' profits. Wall St is eating it up, but what that means is that when Sam P retires, IBM will be a sad shadow of its former self. > > I mean there's Marketing and then there's marketing. IBM is failing at both levels. There are those within the Informix community that ask for 'marketing' and didn't differentiate between Marketing or marketing. Actually they wanted Marketing, but would have been happy with marketing. The big 'M' in marketing denotes actually spending money and doing an agressive ad campaign. The little 'm' in marketing denotes doing things to market the product with out actually spending money on the big 'M' stuff. > > I could call Alyse P on the carpet for continually failing to do the things needed to do the marketing or sales related activities to improve the sales numbers. But then again, she's a woman 'exec' within IBM, so I guess I shouldn't hold her to the same standard as I would Jerry, Arvin the Marvin, Steve Mills,... you know that crowd. > > I mean heck in one weekend, a certain IIUG member warned Alyse about some trouble in a major FL account, and she was told that there was a lack of parity in the sales force between IT Specialists who knew DB2 and those that knew IDS. It was even told her on how she could increase the parity without expending a dime outside of the cost of the certification tests. > > Did she listen? No, apparently not. Yet she was promoted out of her then role as WW Informix Sales. > > We could also look at IBM's failed attempts at purchasing Sun. Whether you liked the deal or not, IBM needed it because IBM needed to expand in to their white space. Buying Sun would have done just that. But then again, IBM (Janet P) convinced SAP to *not* support IDS in their next release and IBM (Janet P) hoped that Informix/SAP customers would become DB2/SAP customers. Instead the bulk went to Oracle. (Wow! That was a swift move!) > > The real interesting thing is that we will continue to see a slide in Informix sales numbers. The 'double digit' growth wasn't due to 'net new IBM customers' but due to 'true ups' people getting off of 9.x and moving to 10.x or hopefully 11.x. > > To make things worse, IBM's IM is going to see tougher times with respect to revenue numbers. Remember for the past 2 years I've talked about DB2 mainframe migrations to distributed systems? That's right kiddies. IBM's big revenue numbers come from overpriced MIPs on the mainframe. Some customers are migrating to Oracle or SQLServer on distributed platforms. <Insert mock *shock* here>. IBM missed this opportunity because the mainframe is their *sacred cow*. It takes 2-5 years of migration effort to move mainframe apps to a distributed environment, depending on the customer, their funding and the complexity of their environment.  Those customers are going to slowly shrink their MIPs which means that IBM's IM revenue numbers are going to take a hit. > > Of course since IBM doesn't break out details by platform... we'll never know the full extent of the damage. > > The net result is that less revenue means less money for R&D. This means tougher times for Informix within IBM. Despite the fast talk to the Informix  faithful, IBM's actions speak louder than words. They say one thing, yet they do another. BTW, having some boob in MA calling existing Informix customers and BPs to tell them about the new DW functionality of IDS is akin to pissing on a fire. Yes you're putting water on the flame, but its no where near enough of an effort. > > You don't have to believe what I say, but at least 2 years from now, you can look through the archives and see this post. > > The point of this rant is that someone has to say that the emperor has no clothes. That is, someone has to point out the obvious fact that IBM is starting down a negative slope and that they need to start putting a plan of action in place. > > On a side note.... > > If I were to ask the FLM (first line manager) of the IM IT Specialists who in the Chicagoland area is running Informix... Do you think *she* knows? If I asked the same question of any of the S&D execs including the BUE, do you think they know? Realistically the senior execs like the BUE support all of IBM so knowing which customers run IDS is not really a fair question. The point is that the FLM should know. Especially since she and Rob now run the local user group. (I guess that this counts as their 'give back' to the community as part of the PBCs...) > > I know for a fact that they don't know. > They could run a report from the AAS system, but that would mean calling a manager in support to do it for them. Even then, there's a couple of IBM customers and BPs that have operations here in Chicago, that aren't on their maps. > > But hey! I've missed the last couple of meetings. I mean, why would I want to sit through a presentation on IDS 11.x features for the nth time? > > -G > > _________________________________________________________________ > Windows Live™ Hotmail®: Celebrate the moment with your favorite sports pics. Check it out.http://www.windowslive.com/Online/Hotmail/Campaign/QuickAdd?ocid=TXT_... Michael, It is really a good article from you. Each and every word is good at what is going to happen to Informix. But I am not sure why IBM is developing and adding new futures to Informix with out good marketing.... Back in 1999 and 2000 when I signed up for IIUG emails, there was floods of emails coming to my email box. I was even not able to read all the emails. But today, there was hardly one email. That really indicates how many customers are using Informix or alrady migrated to other RDBMS. We can also think that all Informixers are experts by this time and they don't have questions, so that's why there are no emails coming....but If there are new customers and new genartion is learning Informix, there would be obviously questions. The place where I am working, we use Hyperion, Informix, Sun OS ( 33.33% + 33.33% + 33.33% from 3 vendors ) and other technologies... but what will happen in future... if one vendor does not support Informix (after acquisition), the customer has to migrate to other (66.66%), rather migrating to 33.33%. I feel sorry for a good Technologically sound RDBMS is diminishing slowly.... because if a@@NL

> From: chavan1@gmail.com > Subject: Re: End of an era. > Date: Fri, 24 Jul 2009 12:06:34 -0700 > To: informix-list@iiug.org > [SNIP] > Michael, > It is really a good article from you. Each and every word > is good at what is going to happen to Informix. But I am not sure why > IBM is developing and adding new futures to Informix with out good > marketing.... Back in 1999 and 2000 when I signed up for IIUG emails, > there was floods of emails coming to my email box. I was even not able > to read all the emails. But today, there was hardly one email. That > really indicates how many customers are using Informix or alrady > migrated to other RDBMS. We can also think that all Informixers are > experts by this time and they don't have questions, so that's why > there are no emails coming....but If there are new customers and new > genartion is learning Informix, there would be obviously questions. > The place where I am working, we use Hyperion, Informix, Sun OS > ( 33.33% + 33.33% + 33.33% from 3 vendors ) and other technologies... > but what will happen in future... if one vendor does not support > Informix (after acquisition), the customer has to migrate to other > (66.66%), rather migrating to 33.33%. I feel sorry for a good > Technologically sound RDBMS is diminishing slowly.... because if a > technology is sound and good it will be good for the world. because if > the same amount of work can be done with less number of resources than > "O"ther technologies, other resources can work on other technologies > on research and technology development... > > -- Chavan Chavan, As part of the sale of Informix to IBM, IBM agreed to maintain and enhance Informix. I believe that this was done in part to get the cooperation of some of Informix's largest customers (including some of IBM's largest customers) and to avoid regulatory concerns. (Yes the deal could have been stopped if there were complaints that IBM was purchasing Informix to shut down a competitor. ) So IBM supports Informix, and enhances the IDS product as it supports it. They have to. The problem is that you can still kill a product by convincing BPs, and Vendors to not use IDS and instead use DB2. Janet P did this when she went to SAP and convinced them to nolonger support IDS and instead forge better ties to DB2. Unfortunately, Informix customers balked at this and went with Oracle instead. Its now more than likely, for their next ERP solution, they'll consider Oracle's products. You can't blame Oracle, IBM shot themselves in the foot. DB2 is not and will never be as good as IDS in Informix's space. Were project Arrowhead (The Informix project Arrowhead) to have happened, Informix would have crushed DB2 in all aspects. The other problem is that not all areas of IDS are getting enhanced. An example... Extensibility. Since IDS is IBM's only product that is extensible, any enhancements to extensibility is not transferable to DB2. (Extenders still exist? And who's using them?) Also support for languages like Ruby, PHP, Perl, etc ... they are supported by IBM by forcing you to use the DRDA API. Both IDS and DB2 have DRDA 'servers' within the engine. Just don't know how well DRDA works compared to native Informix connectivity. (Benchmarks anyone?) So if you wanted to use IBM's Ruby adaptor against a 10.x engine, you can't. But when you have a community supported adaptor vs the vendor's supported adaptor, one opts to go with the vendor most of the time, if not all of the time in production environments. IBM's goal is to make DB2 and Informix 'so compatitble', you wouldn't be able to tell which engine is which, so you should go with DB2. (Or so the story goes... I heard this from a reliable source not from IBM . But it does sound like something IBM would say. In fact the presentation made by Jerry K at the beginning of the year even lends creedence to this party line.) It is sad that IBM can't even do marketing for the product. I wonder how their University program is going. Unfortunately, its really a reliance on the IIUG to make things happen. The really sad thing is that IBM misses the boat and can not think strategically. Sorry Ambush, Arvin the Marvin, you guys don't know or understand the database world. Jerry? There's no question that while you do know it, you're either playing duck and cover until you can retire, or you're too busy fighting fires to think beyond the current quarter. Maybe if you had a competent staff, things would be different. And no, I'm not talking about your product engineering team, but your S&D/Marketing. Seems someone chop blocked you and you're too nice to complain. The sad reality is that there are things that can be done with minimal costs associated to them. Modifying certain people's PBCs is one thing. Getting sales dollars to offer incentives for take out or net new customers is another. Working with BPs in targeted industries and getting your young 'boffinettes' like Guy Bowerman to write certain papers and blogs... Thats another. With respect to your observations... Informix has become a legacy platform in some respect. This could be turned around, but it will take some effort and IBM would have to task a person high enough up the food chain and give them the authority to pull the trigger. More than likely that exec would have to be expendable. Meaning that if necessary, burning bridges and steam rolling road blocks to get things done. But what do I know? Definitely more than I can talk about, and definitely more than I've told some friends at IBM. ;-) -G _________________________________________________________________ Windows Live™ Hotmail®: Search, add, and share the web’s latest sports videos. Check it out. http://www.windowslive.com/Online/Hotmail/Campaign/QuickAdd?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_QA_HM_sports_videos_072009&cat=sports

In article <mailman.162.1248465267.4791.informix-list@iiug.org>, Ian Michael Gumby says... > DB2 is not and will never be as good as IDS in Informix's space. aha the idiot spoke again. It is clear that you have not worked with latest versions of DB2 like 9.5 and 9.7.

On 24 Jul., 17:41, DBA <dba.9...@gmail.com> wrote: > In article <mailman.162.1248465267.4791.informix-l...@iiug.org>, Ian Michael > Gumby says... > > > DB2 is not and will never be as good as IDS in Informix's space. > > aha the idiot spoke again. It is clear that you have not worked with > latest versions of DB2 like 9.5 and 9.7. I'm curious, Who are the large customers working with DB2 9.7?

Hey Gumby... why don't you go to Twitter? I enjoy reading ur posts, they are funny and give another view to a point (not saying you are true thus ;-) ), bt being limioted to 140 characters would teach you to be CONCISE :-)))) You can follow IIUG on Twitter @IIUG. On 25 juil. 09, at 02:39, Vagner wrote: > On 24 Jul., 17:41, DBA <dba.9...@gmail.com> wrote: >> In article <mailman.162.1248465267.4791.informix-l...@iiug.org>, >> Ian Michael >> Gumby says... >> >>> DB2 is not and will never be as good as IDS in Informix's space. >> >> aha the idiot spoke again. It is clear that you have not worked with >> latest versions of DB2 like 9.5 and 9.7. > > I'm curious, Who are the large customers working with DB2 9.7? > > > > _______________________________________________ > Informix-list mailing list > Informix-list@iiug.org > http://www.iiug.org/mailman/listinfo/informix-list

> From: dba.9999@gmail.com > Subject: Re: RE: End of an era. > Date: Fri, 24 Jul 2009 13:41:23 -0700 > To: informix-list@iiug.org > > In article <mailman.162.1248465267.4791.informix-list@iiug.org>, Ian Michael > Gumby says... > > DB2 is not and will never be as good as IDS in Informix's space. > > aha the idiot spoke again. It is clear that you have not worked with > latest versions of DB2 like 9.5 and 9.7. > Thats funny. Anyone who promotes DB2 over IDS has never used IDS. Seems like the only idiot is the one who drank the blue cool aid and posts DB2 propaganda in an IDS forum. _________________________________________________________________ Windows Live™ Hotmail®: Search, add, and share the web’s latest sports videos. Check it out. http://www.windowslive.com/Online/Hotmail/Campaign/QuickAdd?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_QA_HM_sports_videos_072009&cat=sports

"Jean Georges Perrin" <jgp@jgp.net> wrote in message news:mailman.163.1248502595.4791.informix-list@iiug.org... > Hey Gumby... why don't you go to Twitter? > > I enjoy reading ur posts, they are funny and give another view to a point > (not saying you are true thus ;-) ), bt being limioted to 140 characters > would teach you to be CONCISE :-)))) > > You can follow IIUG on Twitter @IIUG. Mate, that *absolutely* sums IBM up in a nutshell. We'll jump on the bad-wagon of the latest fad, which even my grandchildren (aged 4 and 2) can see has a business model that can never be viable. And our Number One candidate for this is The Product We Hate, Informix! Because, truly, we will never bring ourselves to market Informix in any serious fashion. For fuck's sake, are you mad? We might affect DB2 .....