Re: Informix Directions

John Carlson wrote: > Michael Segel wrote: > [SNIP] {Not worth repeating anyways} > Surely someone at Informix is able to see what's happening. > Not really.You have to understand that there has been a lot of turn over. Not too many people have been around a long time. Many have moved on to better things, or have retreated to small rual villages in the South of Spain ;-) The problem is this. Ask the wrong question, get the correct answer to the question but leads to the wrong solution. An example: "We need to cut costs. Which ports can we drop from our porting list?" Answer: "We have the lowest sales on SCO and Solaris on Intel. we should be able to cut those." Now is this a bad thing? Yes. Why? Because it goes against the demographics of the Informix User Base. Informix has no clue as to who is using SCO based products. They have no clue to their demographics. All they know is who has current support contract. Now here's the funny part. This happened because Informix relied on resellers and vars. An example. Informix couldn't tell you who was running fourgen or customerq, tecsys, etc ... Most of these users are still using 5.x product and do not have valid support contracts. Why? because they rely on their vendor for support, and unless they specifically asked for an Informix support contract, they didn't even get to consider it. Why? Cause vendors couldn't sell support contracts. (This may have changed.) But the users have a solution that works. Why worry about CDR or detached indexes when Informix's 5.x meets their needs. So all Informix can count on is what is happening in their named accounts. Ie the big accounts with salesmen. > > As we speak, Informix's stock price seems to have taken a negative trend with > > prices below > > the moving cost average. > > > > Perhaps Bob cut too much too quickly? > > > > Now if only he hadn't given up on the bottom line and looked for potential > > untapped markets > > like Linux. > > > > Sigh, one could only hope for an enlightened CEO.... > > > > I thought that's what we ended up with . . . The jury is still out. From what I hear, he's playing the political game with his vendors. (saying what they want to hear.) He did the right thing, by cutting costs, but he did it to quickly. While this had a positive effect short term, he has yet to establish a clear path. For example. He wants to compete where the competition is not too strong. Hence the position on Data Warehousing. However, he says Informix is *NOT* focusing on the *commodity* products and leaves that market to Microsoft. This doesn't clash with the beta of Informix PE which runs on Win-95. (What a brilliant move! [NOT!]) Informix is pushing its UDO technology to the hilt. However thats like the cart leading the horse. You are pushing a solution to a problem which has yet to be defined. If you look at the *press releases* since the announcements of earnings, two came from Informix and were not news. The latest came from TIBCO's pr dept. Of course its touting a non UDO solution for a banking client. The stock is now trading below its moving average. That's not a good sign. (Oh, I said that already) Informix needs to clarify its market strategy. The bread and butter clients pay the bills so that Informix can look for the more esoteric and visible clients. Of course, why would they want to listen to little ol me? After all, I didn't come from a billion dollar Big Blue company, I just be a little ol mercenary hired to solve the problems created by others. ;-) BTW, anyone know what date in May is the annual share holders meeting? I want to make my plane reservations so I can get a low air fare. -Mikey