Re: Informix's Official NewEra Three Year Plan

Hello Everybody! :-) Couldn't stay outta this one, please forgive me. :-) Kenneth Gonzalez wrote: > > Hi, > > Michael Segel wrote: > > Hmmm, > > By what Christine (Da Babe) wrote, > > No argument there ;-) > > > N.E. is doing one enhancement release this year (early '98), > > then going in to a maintenance mode on the product. > > No... all three releases are listed as maintenance releases, though > there are some specific items that are going into the Q1 release. Just > because it is maintenance, doesn't mean that new functionality cannot be > added to it. If you need specific items added to the base product or > enhanced, then they are going to have to be requested. As a general > suggestion, you might want to use IIUG to serve as a clearing house for > upgrade/enhancement requests and forward on a batch request to Informix > product management. Christine may have some ideas on how to facilitate > this. > SHRINK-WRAP NEW ERA AND MAKE IT AVAILABLE FOR GENERAL EVALUATION. Heh-heh, :-) sorry, didn't mean to shout, but New Era never got the real shake-out it deserves, by allowing a massively parallel evaluation of developers to look it over, and provide feedback to Informix. This is what other software companies do, it's high f***ing time Informix does this. :-) > This could serve several purposes: > 1. Allow the user community to drive the enhancement process in an > organized fashion. Have Informix build the products you want to use the > first (second?) time. Again, if nobody is using it, how can this or should this occur? New Era is a proprietary solution, overpriced, and basically a constant reminder of how much Informix has ignored the developer community at large. There is NO business case for New Era. It is simply an emotional decision to continue it, to allow folks at the top to kid themselves there's any worth in it. But no reasonable market understanding would allow it to continue. When Informix announced that this dungeon-bound-abomination continues to live, similar to another Friday the 13th movie, it does nothing to foster any sense of remorse from Informix for the sins of the past. If a company uses and develops with NE, they better prepare to have the application support itself, in the event the one programmer they find to create applications leaves. To be in order here, it should not be up to the user community to drive the enhancement process, or be up to the user community to do Informix's work for them. Informix should drive this, and be the leader here. For example, if you have all the friggin technology, use it for problem reporting at your web site, for ANY problem, and allow us to post our problems and requests. We would also want query capability. > 2. Give Informix an idea of how many customers the proposed > changes/additions are important to. It's easier to justify an upgrade > request when you can say that a majority of the current installed base > are pulling for something. > No, do some research on your own, and provide some leadership here. :-) We've been trying to do your suggestion for the Informix on Linux effort and are getting a deaf ear. Informix communicates when it's convenient but is not serious about any kind of user requests. Informix pushes the web as a technology, but does nothing to provide a developer web site. New Era was dumped onto the market, with ridiculous pricing, and limited functionality. It remains a pariah to the majority of developers, and lost whatever little edge it could have had, because the arrogance of Informix refusing to put it out it out for general evaluation. Most of the developers I work with, and talk to wouldn't use New Era for any apparent reason. New Era was never a product of any market research. It was never allowed to be evaluated by the developer community. When Informix wants to, they come up with the "business case" dynamic to sound important, but the reality is, most of the products that have come out were done through strategic thinking based on where the market was headed, not on the existing market. The 7.x product is proof of that. 7.x wasn't dreamed up through market research, or business cases, it was a strategic effort to beat the competition based on the future market. Universal Server is the same idea. Sure IUS flopped early, but it will probably be a success if we ever see it. Third-party support will make IUS an eventual success, but New Era has almost no support from anyone, or any other vendors. New Era was an error, it was based on the future, and flopped. You can't win 'em all. Products with even higher visibility such as from Symantec and others have learned long ago how to sell C/S development tools. If Informix is going to compete in this market they better wake up. > In the end, it couldn't hurt and very well could make a difference. > > > What this says to me, is that N.E. is not a mission crittical > > application for Informix. (Meaning Informix doesn't go under if > > N.E. sales tank.) > > Isn't that already the case??? Fact of the matter is that engine sales > are the companies "life blood". It has been that way as long as I can > remember. As far as mission critical goes, it is to the extent that we > have tools products which support our database products and take > advantage of our unique functionality. Something which tools vendors who > organize themselves around ODBC do not necessarily have a desire to do. > It's in their best interests to work with every DB and gear their > development to that lowest-common-denominator. > And thusly they have succeeded in selling products that appeal to a wide audience, wide variety of situations, and wide variety of talent to support the apps built with these tools. Isn't it a bit of conflict to suck up to Microsoft with the emphasis on NT, and then turn around and say a non-ODBC app builder is the way to go? Again this demonstrates that Informix does not understand the very market New Era was sent to compete in. Like a lamb to the slaughter it continues to be chewed on by the critics. :-) > > Of course, they said the same about 4GL and it will still be around. > 4GL is far more viable and practical for many situations than New Error will ever be. 4GL is a completely different product than New Era. > Products of consequence to a company rarely disappear. When they do, it > has been my observation that it was probably best for the user community > and for the vendor. I don't believe that this is the case with NewEra or > with 4GL. "They" also said that NewEra was the replacement for 4GL... I > didn't believe that either. I think that it was a classic case of > comparing apples-to-oranges. > What's best for the user community is a vendor who listens to the customer. And the consequence of hanging on to New Era is that it will continue to send a confusing message to the customer base, and be a major distraction to an already troubled company. If I keep hearing about Informix reducing their head count, and they hang on to New Era, I know for sure there is a bigger problem at Informix than I