Re: Linux marketing - at allmost zero cost (fwd)

Art S. Kagel, kagel@bloomberg.com ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Thu, 9 Oct 1997 15:55:47 -0400 (EDT) From: "Art S. Kagel" <kagel@bloomberg.com> To: Nils.Myklebust@idg.no Cc: kagel@ns1, linux-committee@iiug.org Subject: Re: Linux marketing - at allmost zero cost On Thu, 9 Oct 1997 Nils.Myklebust@idg.no wrote: > Yes *I* agree wity you Art. My thinking however was that Informix might be > a little afraid of doing a marketing campaign for a Linux version. There > are > several possible reasons for that: > > 1. It may be seen by the market as if Informix is clutching at the last > straw. > Informix may believe, rightly or wrongly, that people will see a desperate > company [SNIP] No, not marketing, PR! Not "Now available Informix for Linux contact your Local Informix Sales office!" but rather "Informix is Proud to announce support for the Linux Operating System with its entire product line. Informix has just become the first major DBMS vendor to support this growing market segment. A toy for amateur programmers 3 years ago there are currently over 5 million Linux installations over 1 million of which are in commercial use. This announcement opens for Informix a vast market where it has no serious competition. Research indicates that almost 1/2 of the existing Internet servers are based on Linux platforms, Informix which has positioned its database products for the Internet community seeks to tap this market and become the database of choice for the Internet. Informix indicated that it expects Q1-1998 sales of Linux products to exceed ..." > > 2. Their other Unix partners may react negatively and see this as "unfair" > competition to their own offerings. Informix is now selling on a free OS > and > it may hurt their own low end sales. They may also see that Linux can Do HP, Sun, IBM, etc give Informix grief because they support the others? Because they support SCO UNIX, or Altos UNIX or NCR UNIX or DG/UX or ... I do not see this as a problem. > 3. Some journalists and analysts may not have much of a positive view > of Linux. This may result in negative reports of Informix selling their > products in > an environement that hardly can work very well. Most industry journalists have accepted Linux as fact they are mostly playing wait and see for major vendor support. Lo and behold here comes a major vendor to support Linux. They may jump on the band wagon with both feet. As far as financial analysts, they will call Informix a 'HOLD' until the first real sales figures are anounced. Hence the need to follow up quickly with sales figures quarterly for the first year. This will serve to keep the Informix name in the public eye with, hopefully, positive publicity which should help generate sales in other markets as well to bolster the announcements of Linux sales. Voila, snowball! Art S. Kagel, kagel@bloomberg.com