DBA Demand

Quick question: Is the demand for Informix DBAs increasing, decreasing or staying the same? When IBM bought Informix, it looked like they were going to kill it, and I got out of the field, but it looks like Informix is coming back. Any thoughts? Cheers, Harold Luse, Owner TGR Solutions, LLC

As an employer I find it very difficult to get Informix-savvy staff. Most people with Informix experience in the UK (and looking at the demographic which attends the IIUG conference as a yard-stick, the US) are now in their 40s and 50s at least. Few companies are training up new Informix people, and few ambitious younger technicians I find are interested in learning Informix. We find it a turn-off for Oracle DBA interviewees for instance when we suggest they may have to learn some Informix. Your question was: is the demand changing, and I think probably it is declining gently, but the supply is dropping at least as fast. regards N

The field is stable for now. There is potential for expansion of Informix in the market due to 1) IWA, 2) Timeseries, 3) NoSQL/SQL Hybrid support, & 4) improved embeddability. That's my take. Art Art S. Kagel, Principal Consultant Advanced DataTools (www.advancedatatools.com) Blog: http://informix-myview.blogspot.com/ Disclaimer: Please keep in mind that my own opinions are my own opinions and do not reflect on my employer, Advanced DataTools, the IIUG, nor any other organization with which I am associated either explicitly, implicitly, or by inference. Neither do those opinions reflect those of other individuals affiliated with any entity with which I am affiliated nor those of the entities themselves. On Sun, Oct 27, 2013 at 11:03 PM, Harold Luse <hluse@centurylink.net> wrote: > Quick question: Is the demand for Informix DBAs increasing, decreasing or > staying the same? When IBM bought Informix, it looked like they were going > to kill it, and I got out of the field, but it looks like Informix is > coming > back. Any thoughts? > > Cheers, > Harold Luse, Owner > TGR Solutions, LLC > > > > ******************************************************************************* > Forum Note: Use "Reply" to post a response in the discussion forum. > > --001a11c37a08c2e83304e9fd2e1f

My view on this is very limited... small country, small customers. I have an hard time finding anyone (except for one big customer) who entitles themselves as an Informix DBA. And this is really not marketing bulls*** It really takes less time to manage, so most peole have several hats, one of which is "informix DBA". And we can see this in the ads. It's much more frequent to see request for developers than for DBAs And naturally the economic crisis (mostly in Europe I suppose) is slowing new hires. As for the young people not wanting to learn it, I see that also. They prefer to take a much less interesting "pseudo-DBA*" for big O then a real and challenging position as an Informix DBA where they can effectively learn more about databases. Meanwhile I have two good examples of young guys, with no real experience on real systems that started to work with it. They were good and it was very fast to get them very productive. And they ended up loving the product. I believe you know one... One of them moved to another area (security) and the other is an happy Informix DBA. This is not necessarily bad for the "old" and experienced Informix DBA of course. Interestingly enough in the last couple of weeks I received several requests for upgrades, meetings, more info and so on for "old" customers that are still running incredibly old Informix versions. This means they've not abandoned their old systems... they simply run. At the same time I came across a rather large (possibly) new implementation involving several distinguishable product features. * : like executing already made scripts in QA or Prod environments where they have no autonomy to change those scripts (if something goes wrong they complain to DEV and eventually call the "real" DBA On Mon, Oct 28, 2013 at 8:27 PM, NEIL TRUBY <neil.truby@ardenta.com> wrote: > As an employer I find it very difficult to get Informix-savvy staff. Most > people with Informix experience in the UK (and looking at the demographic > which attends the IIUG conference as a yard-stick, the US) are now in their > 40s and 50s at least. Few companies are training up new Informix people, > and > few ambitious younger technicians I find are interested in learning > Informix. > We find it a turn-off for Oracle DBA interviewees for instance when we > suggest > they may have to learn some Informix. > > Your question was: is the demand changing, and I think probably it is > declining gently, but the supply is dropping at least as fast. > > regards > N > > > > ******************************************************************************* > Forum Note: Use "Reply" to post a response in the discussion forum. > > -- Fernando Nunes Portugal http://informix-technology.blogspot.com My email works... but I don't check it frequently... --001a11337ed4d44dee04e9ff148d

Hi All, It is my understanding that not lot customers are using informix database so that demanding is very less but finding experience people not lot. Thank you On Tue, Oct 29, 2013 at 4:27 AM, NEIL TRUBY <neil.truby@ardenta.com> wrote: > As an employer I find it very difficult to get Informix-savvy staff. Most > people with Informix experience in the UK (and looking at the demographic > which attends the IIUG conference as a yard-stick, the US) are now in their > 40s and 50s at least. Few companies are training up new Informix people, > and > few ambitious younger technicians I find are interested in learning > Informix. > We find it a turn-off for Oracle DBA interviewees for instance when we > suggest > they may have to learn some Informix. > > Your question was: is the demand changing, and I think probably it is > declining gently, but the supply is dropping at least as fast. > > regards > N > > > > ******************************************************************************* > Forum Note: Use "Reply" to post a response in the discussion forum. > > --001a11c379ec16323104ea008504

Hi, real and meaningful numbers to answer your question are hard to get. I'm weary of deducing from a (perceived) declining demand for Informix DBAs that the Informix product is used less. There are other important factors at play ...: Well known Informix user Walmart has reduced the number of DBAs for their Informix systems even though at the same time they increased the number of Informix systems deployed. I have no up-to-date numbers, but the ratio should be well over 10.000 Informix systems administered by 5-6 DBAs. If today you are doing a phone call over IP, chances are more than 50% that the call is going through a device with an Informix server. Over time, Informix has gotten better and better at requiring less administration, which means for smaller deployments of Informix server, administration often is anything but a full-time job. While 20 years ago, this might have meant, that a full-time Informix DBA has a lot of time to explore new features, versions, technologies ... in today's much more profit-oriented and money-saving world, the task of administering Informix systems much likely became a "do-also" activity for a different job-title. Finally, a nice (but still true) anecdote, from this forum: A few years ago someone asked for help to "find his Informix system". The person was a month or two into his new job of DBA for various non-Informix systems, when one morning he got user-complaints that some critical application doesn't work. Someone at least was able to tell him, that this application uses an Informix database. That was about all the information he could get. Up to this morning he was unaware of any Informix system that he's responsible for, and nobody knew even, on which machine it is running and where that machine might be (physically). Once he found the machine (tracing back the IP address from the application), nobody could tell him, how to set the environment for adiministrative access to the running Informix server ... When this new DBA got hired, everybody had completely forgotten, that they have an Informix system serving a critical application - in their own house. "Informix - set it and forget it" ... for some people this was not just a marketing slogan ... apparently they took it as advice and followed it duly ... ;-) Regards, Martin -- Martin Fuerderer IBM Informix Development Munich, Germany Information Management Read about the Informix Warehouse Accelerator: http://tinyurl.com/the-iwa-blog IBM Deutschland Research & Development GmbH Chairman of the Supervisory Board: Martina Koederitz Board of Management: Dirk Wittkopp Corporate Seat: Boeblingen, Germany Reg.-Gericht: Amtsgericht Stuttgart, HRB 243294 From: "Harold Luse" <hluse@centurylink.net> To: ids@iiug.org, Date: 10/30/2013 23:42 Subject: DBA Demand [31830] Sent by: ids-bounces@iiug.org Quick question: Is the demand for Informix DBAs increasing, decreasing or staying the same? When IBM bought Informix, it looked like they were going to kill it, and I got out of the field, but it looks like Informix is coming back. Any thoughts? Cheers, Harold Luse, Owner TGR Solutions, LLC ******************************************************************************* Forum Note: Use "Reply" to post a response in the discussion forum.

Sold a lot of IWA ....?

Hi, yes, IWA has been and is selling well. Obviously, I can't tell absolut numbers ... "a lot of" is a relative measure that I can answer with "yes". IWA has proven to be a good investment for the Informix product family, and we are continuing to enhance IWA with new features in every release. Regards, Martin -- Martin Fuerderer IBM Informix Development Munich, Germany Information Management Read about the Informix Warehouse Accelerator: http://tinyurl.com/the-iwa-blog IBM Deutschland Research & Development GmbH Chairman of the Supervisory Board: Martina Koederitz Board of Management: Dirk Wittkopp Corporate Seat: Boeblingen, Germany Reg.-Gericht: Amtsgericht Stuttgart, HRB 243294 From: "NEIL TRUBY" <neil.truby@ardenta.com> To: ids@iiug.org, Date: 11/01/2013 19:21 Subject: Re: DBA Demand [31867] Sent by: ids-bounces@iiug.org Sold a lot of IWA ....? ******************************************************************************* Forum Note: Use "Reply" to post a response in the discussion forum.