Re: INFORMIX WISH LIST

MarkDenham@aol.com wrote: > > Tim > > Glad to see that somebody is flying the flag. I agree with all of your > comments. > Thanks Mark for your support and everyone else who has sent me their wish list. I have to say at this point I can't respond to each and every one that comes in. I will definitely however add whatever any of you send, to the list. Keep in mind only Santa Claus could respond to all the letters, so I'm saying here, THANK YOU> DON'T STOP NOW. :-) And thanks also to the others here who've been supportive. It's early yet, and this does not mean to shy away. Some of the needs out there are really good ones. If Informix could see c.d.i. as a legitimate sounding board, we would all be happy. To tell me Informix is interested in "active dialog" and then not hear a peep from them tells me that basically I can say whatever I want here, it really doesn't matter. They either don't know how to use a phone or email, or just don't care. ( Yeah, there's a couple of you that are active here, and you know who you are--I'm not talking about you :-) I had heard a while back probably last year, two distinct contradictions coming from Informix people here in Florida. One statement was "We want our people in c.d.i. actively trying to help fix problems." The other statement was "We're supposed to stay out of the user group community--it's their business, we stay clear". With this kind of contradiction in Informix, I clearly understand what's going on. My gripes are based on experience. Here in Florida the runaround of who to talk to is so bad I gave up a long time ago. Confusion is rampant, as well as a lack of a clearly defined company vision for Informix. In the past month, IBM has called me twice, Empress has called me twice, and of late I'm doing work with Microsloth. It's sad, but if Informix is waiting for the IIUG Conference to make some kind of announcement, excuse me, that's a month away, and not everyone is attending. We're not school children for the most part, but actively involved in BUSINESS. Cold hard cash. If there is some kind of new message coming from Informix they need to say it now. If you say it at the conference, what's the difference? Did Netscapes' conference really make that much of a difference? Informix has to get away from the idea that they can direct the market from management down. This top-down model is going to backfire, because the younger talent coming up is just as smart--if not smarter--than I was when I was coming up through the ranks. THEY are pushing management, telling them what to buy. The new developer today is using words like Booch, COM, SDK, and Viper. But I don't hear the words I want. Maybe you don't either. Unless you say something you will never know if you could have made a difference. If you don't say it here, say it where you can. I'll be getting my Empress-for-Linux kit shortly, and IBM is sending me their DB2 'Universal Server'. I already have the earlier DB2 for eval. They also have me on a software alert list-serve--what a novel idea. I've used an older version of Empress, and it worked quite well. Oracle? HA! I can get that one too, and an easy deal that one is... Lots of Oracle here... ATT here is dumping Informix for Oracle--supposed to be on it before the end of 1998 I here. And a rather large publisher here who has Illustra told me they think Informix is a bit pricy. Even with all that money, they think it's too much. They're being lured to the competition, because the competition is showing up with competitive pricing, not a better product. They are smart enough to see that many of the data base products out there are so similar that it's really down to a commodity market. There's a lot of new business to go after with Linux, and it could be a nice combination with Empress. They tell me Cisco is using Empress for their embedded data base in their routers. With an ODBC/JDBC client connection, the sky is the limit. That new Visual Basic 5.0 is impressive too. It's doubtful I'm going to spend much longer trying to unf*** the laziness of Informix. I'll be damned if I go into a meeting and try to sway anybody to Informix, knowing Informix will not return my calls, or attempt to make a decent presentation, or show any kind of interest in making a sale, or support. Imagine trying to promote Informix in a Microsoft shop. HA! Or an Oracle shop! Or sticking my neck out on a business that is migrating from Access to "we need something bigger than Access, what do you recommend?". Why should I recommend Informix? Where are they now? And what have they done for me lately? What about any kind of co-op marketing, and presence in the region. It's an uphill climb, and I am not going alone. We're talking common sense business here. If you can't figure it out Informix get people in to help you--just like you expect your customers to do with you. And don't think you can win on big iron alone. It doesn't work that way anymore. Big shops are not the only game in town. And managers are not the ones who will end up using your products and developing your market. :-\\ It is not "the survival of the unfittest". And you don't need to be technical to figure that one out. -- Tim Schaefer \\\\|// tschaefe@mindspring.com (6 6) ------------------------oOOo---( )---o00o--------- http://www.inxutil.com