Ooops they did it again!

Wow! I don't know if any of you subscribe to InformationWeek, or get their invites to their web casts. They just had one sponsored with IBM. The guest speakers were: Wayne Rash, Contributing Editor of TechWeb Merv Adrian, Principal, IT Market Strategy (No company name) Arvind Krishna, VP Enterprise Information Management Products, IBM arvindK@us.ibm.com Here's a blub on the topic of today's call: "In this one-hour Webcast, IT Market Strategy Analyst Merv Adrian and Arvind Krishna, Vice President, IBM Information Management Development, talk with TechWeb about how companies are using new data management technologies to save on data administration, storage, servers, energy consumption, and IT support — and reinvesting those savings into business priorities such as information-driven optimization. A live question-and-answer session follows the presentation. " I believe you can still download the deck of slides from the website. But Gumby, what does this have to do with Informix? Ah glad you asked.... Nothing. IBM went out and did a DB2 dog and pony show to promote DB2. Nothing wrong with that. Except for a little thing known as IBM having multiple databases in their line up. It appears that IBM's 'go to market strategy', yes Arvind, I *was* the one who asked that question..., it appears the strategy is to say whatever they think the customer wants to hear. If they have a sales team thats knowledgeable about DB2, they'll try to push DB2. IDS? Well, they don't have knowledgeable sales teams that can talk about IDS, so they'll skip it unless the customer asks for it and then they bring in a BP to do the heavy lifting.... Sorry but there are a couple take aways from this broadcast that speaks volumes about IBM. 1) They are not presenting IDS on even footing. 2) IBM's public push is behind DB2 as their core product offering. (Infosphere and Solid are in a supporting role) 3) IBM was a bit dishonest in their responses. When I asked the question about IBM's go to market strategy, there was a *long* pause. :-) Arvind aka 'Arvin the Marvin'*, had to think and I have to believe that the question took him by surprise since it wasn't planned and well it wasn't a fluff question. His response mentioned IMS first, then Solid, then Informix aka IDS, U2, and a reference to Cloudscape. I hate to tell Arvin the Marvin that IBM stopped supporting Cloudscape aka Derby aka JavaDB and anyone who supports Derby that works from IBM posts with their own personal e-mail address that doesn't say IBM. Most of the main contributors today are Sun employees. As to IMS, who's still running IMS, we used to sell migration services (ala Kim Skarda) many moons ago on an IMS take out to DB2 mainframe. U2? I heard a quote that it was a silent [redacted] million a year money maker. I redacted the amount since I don't want IBM to get too mad at me for spilling all the beans. Not to mention the quote I heard was 7+ years ago. ;-) But Arvin the Marvin said everything but really talked about Informix aka IDS. Just mentioned it. And the question really dealt with OLTP. Another question asked was how many DBAs does it take to run a database shop? Like what's the ratio to database instances to DBAs. Arvin the Marvin mentioned that there was a certain company that was running 15,000 databases using 8 dbas, but failed to acknowledge that they were running Informix and not DB2. As to the customer? Its a certain large retailer who's HQ is in the center of the US and its not in Chicago... You figure that out Wally! :-) In the slide deck there was a fragmented quote from the CIO of Tellabs. Going from memory, Tellabs runs mainly on Oracle with their SAP install now on DB2. They were one of a handful of SAP customers who switched from IDS to DB2. Norma Jean could probably provide more details since she was one of their DBAs... ;-) Oh and one last thing... He even talked about benchmarks... DB2 has benchmarks... IDS? Not so much. I think you can get to a replay of the webcast, here's my link ... http://w.on24.com/r.htm?e=144630&s=1&k=0214D8C48E53915ADCD4EC47F36E1BF9 But hey! What do I know? I'm sure if Mark T. was listening to the call he'd have a lot to say about their FUD they said about Oracle... ;-) -G * 'Arvin the Marvin' is a play on 'Marvin the ARVN'. This was 'nickname' the US troops called the 'Army of the Republic of Viet Nam' (ARVN)