Gary's Editorial

For those of you who don't get the IIUG's newsletter, Gary did a little Q&A post. There were some gaps so lets shed some light ... #1) Q: In the US we hear an encouraging message from IBM, but in countries outside the US the message is completely different. Is IBM in other countries obligated to US IBM Information Management or is every country running its own show? A: It is hard to say what the answer was. It contained internal IBM acronyms, which I did not understand, and did not address the question directly. I think it meant to say that the US data management is making a great effort to enlighten sales and marketing in the different geographies. What I and any attendee I spoke to understood: We have very little influence outside the US. Don't expect any change in the near future. -=- Send me the acronyms and I'll decipher them. :-) But to your point... WW Sales is well in charge of WW Sales, however each country is a separate organization, so the WW Sales does not have the direct control over the individual countries. They are more or less 'matrixed'. While the WW Sales is now 'making a "great" effort to "enlighten"' the sales and marketing in other geographies... we'll that means "All hands calls"... which from experience means that someone from US WW Sales organization will get on a call and show pretty pictures while the sales teams listen and do other work, not really paying attention. Trust me, I know. I've sat through many of the calls, even in conference rooms with the local sales teams. Now there are some things IM Management can do to impact the WW sales organization. However they lack the 'balls' to actually do it. And IM Executive Management lacks the balls or the will to make it happen. So Gary is right in his final assessment. Don't expect too much. ==== #2) Q: What is IBM doing to make the sales force Informix enabled? A: To make a very long answer short; An effort is being made to enable the sales force. But there is still a long way to go. -=- Bzzt! No offense Gary, but back in 2006 I point blank told Alyse what they needed to do. Again, I was matrix'd to S&D so I know how they operate and think. IBM has known that the first step is to gain parity between certified DB2 IT Specialists and certified IDS Specialists. That doesn't mean that they had to hire more IT Specialists, but to use the PBCs to motivate DB2 certified specialists to get cross trained. (Oh and I know the 'push back' and this is where the 'balls' comment comes in.) If IBM IM Management doesn't have the balls to do this, then they don't have the balls to handle the WW Sales issue. If the effort is more 'All Hands Calls', then you're going to see hell freeze over first and I don't mean Hell Michigan. ;-) === #3) Q: What is IBM doing to actually get sales people to promote, talk about and hopefully sell Informix to potential customers? A: I think the answer was that IBM relies on its sales force to do the right thing, whatever that is. I may be wrong but it looks as if the sales people will not go out of their way to break an old habit of selling DB2. -=- Gary is spot on. And the problem isn't an IM thing, or a SWG thing. Its an S&D thing. Meaning that S&D will sell Oracle over either DB2 or IDS if it means selling Websphere and IGS consulting services. The Client Rep will sell a competitors product if it means an easier sell. So if the customer mentions Oracle, forget about IM's piece of the pie. THIS WILL NOT CHANGE ANYTIME SOON. === #4) Q: How will Informix and DB2 be differentiated in the Sales pitch from a technical perspective? A: Between DB2 and what? Just kidding. A difference was described but it was hard for me to understand it. I hope our potential customers are more intelligent than I am. -=- Uh huh. Ok, English isn't Gary's first language so maybe there's something to this. But no. Gary is a *smart* guy. #5) Q: Open source products are usually used with open source free databases like MySQL. How does IBM plan to convince them to use Informix? A: No one uses MySQL in a real production environment (90% of the open source community has just been ignored. GB) There is no need to convince them. Everyone knows that Informix is the best dataset out there. (I agree with the second part of the sentence. GB) LOL... First MySQL isn't "Free" but that's a different story. The point is that using supported Open Source products like "Postgres" are making inroads. Their sales pitch is that they work just as well as Oracle, but at a fraction of the price. But back to MySQL. I seem to recall the LinkedIn profile of a certain DBA who worked for a once all Informix shop. His title now says Informix and MySQL DBA. So if this person who works for HomeDepot puts it on his job title, I wonder if IBM doesn't realize the inroads MySQL is making? With today's hardware, many of the Open Source databases perform well enough to be put in to production. SE is 20+ years old. If store systems could use SE, you don't think they could also use MySQL too? Oh and 4GL isn't a lock in to IDS. Right Stuart? (Stuart has been pimping for 4Js ;-) ) -=- Now there's more. Like the Academic initiative. LOL. Sorry, I'm not laughing at the IIUG but at IBM. Care to guess what is being taught at today's universities? Try Hadoop, and HBase along with other open source projects. No cost to the universities, and you can cluster 'commodity' hardware. Seriously. IBM was given an answer on how to do a *real* Academic Initiative that would make IDS relevant. Too bad they didn't listen. But that's par for the course. "If we wanted your opinion, we would have given it to you..." Gary is being polite. IBM still suffers from "Brown Necked" Hypoxia. (For those who don't understand the medical terms... Hypoxia is when a patient suffers physical damage due to a lack of Oxygen. "Brown Necked" Hypoxia is Hypoxia caused by having one's head so far up the ass that there are shit rings on the individuals neck.) But hey! What do I know? Its not like I worked in the Lab cross matrixed to S&D in a *sales* position. Oh wait, I did. Now the horrors of having to work with some 'brain dead' fscks doing bad deals just to make their numbers... Sorry I need to take my meds so I can forget about how screwed up IBM really is... -G