Re: Seeding the market (was Informix Directions)

David Kosenko wrote: > > Paul Brown wrote: [SNIP] {About market vision} There is market vision, the ability to see the future of a particular market/industry, and there is marketing, ie market research and market planning. But lets focus on market vision. Lets assume that Informix has market vision. They see the need for Object relational databases over the next 5 to 10 years. OK, so what applications would require it? What is Informix doing to enhace these markets? This is where Informix is failing. For example, if one considers biometrics, then obviously, an ORDBMS will be important. But what is Informix doing? NADA! (Its up to *their* partners.) Lets look at another hot area. Java, and smart cards. So what is Informix doing here? Again Nada! They dropped everything. My point? Simple. You create a base tool, yet none of the additional products to sell a solution. So what good is a tool which doesn't have a problem to solve? On the web? There are enough potential solutions which work well that existing relational, even Informix, can be used as the back end. The bottom line, is that even if you concede that Informix *may* have market vision, it fails in execution of a plan to implement their market vision. Or to sell their vision to others. > + Did you guys see the numbers post restatement. Guys, IFMX > + LOST MONEY in commodity DBMSs. > > Wrong. Informix lost money because they IGNORED commodity > DBMSs. I know - I was there. No offence to you and the other > former Illustra folks, but the focus on ORDBMS is what caused the > loss. It's a great technology, but the majority of customers don't > need it - at least not yet. You make money by selling customers > what they want and need TODAY, then leverage those sales to > sell them what they will need for tomorrow. Informix's mistake was > to do the reverse, and it failed miserably. Had the sales model > been to sell ODS and THEN get in and pitch IUS, there would > not have been money lost. They may have even done some > record sales. And there would probably have been more IUS > sales to boot. > Ya what he says! ;-) Seriously, I have to aggree. Informix seemed to jump on this new technology out of desparation. Of course, this technology is harder to sell because the sales force has to understand what they are selling. > + Once again, the IFMX focus seems to be selling into situations > + where the problem is challenging and requires a stronger technical > + solution than the competition is providing. This is unrelated to > + the size of the customer: it's framed in terms of the problem/solution. > > Unfortunately, there are still far fewer of these situations that the normal > old boring DBMS needs situations. To walk away from these, even > with competition present, is plain foolish. At least if you plan on making > any money. > Too true, its stupid to walk away and hand over all of these opportunities to Microsoft without a fight. You can always play the R&D game, but what happens when the customer only needs 20-30% of the functionality? Then cost becomes the driving force. -Mikey -- #include <std_disclaimer.h> /* Mike Segel (MS385) */ #include <No_Spam.h> #ifdef OFFENDED_BY_CONTENT The author takes no responsibility for this post. Any resemblence to a coherent rational thought is purely coincidence. -The Management. #endif ***************************** Due to AGIS's Refusal to Act Responsibly We are blocking all of their domains at the packet level. This block will exist until AGIS modifies their policies to conform to existing RFCs and net community standards. We encourage all ISPs and domain holders to do the same. *****************************