Re: IDS Next Version - features wanted - now widely off topic
End of the 80's I was promoting and supporting Informix products (SE, then Turbo, Online), with conviction and pleasure. I used to know a little Informix 4GL and it's users. I lived the NewEra debacle. When the market clearly indicated Informix lost the battle, IBM decided the buy Informix (for 1 billion $ if I remember). IBM's acquisition did not stop migration of Informix customers to Oracle. There is only one roadmap people are interested in, an eternal one. IBM can not commit this for Informix. IBM can not even commit this for DB2 (for UDB LUW) and the market perception is that Oracle has to do it, as it is Oracle's core business. >From this may I conclude the following? DB2 will also loose the battle against Oracle if IBM continues this way. IBM should tell the market Informix is dead, that no more new releases will come. IBM should put all development money in DB2 UDB (LUW, not speaking about mainframe DB2 here). IBM should make DB2 UDB LUW a separate company, compete against Oracle and get market share for the product or die. Bernard Dhooghe mosserp@wellsfargo.com wrote: > > -----Original Message----- > > From: owner-informix-list@iiug.org > > [mailto:owner-informix-list@iiug.org] On Behalf Of Dirk Moolman > > Sent: Wednesday, June 01, 2005 1:16 AM > > To: Data Goob; informix-list@iiug.org > > Subject: RE: IDS Next Version - features wanted. > > > > > > -----Original Message----- > > From: owner-informix-list@iiug.org > > [mailto:owner-informix-list@iiug.org] > > On Behalf Of Data Goob > > Sent: 01 June 2005 02:07 AM > > To: informix-list@iiug.org > > Subject: Re: IDS Next Version - features wanted. > > > > > > >Paul, > > > > > >Good points you make, but I'm probably Pavlovian about it, basing > > >my comments on the past, where there's been typically only one ad, > > >with one good shot, and one bullet in the gun. > > > > > >This means that we/they/you/us won't get the luxury to waste precious > > >ad-space on fluff and high-level bullshit. If the geeks don't get > > >the message, it doesn't matter. This is who management turns to for > > >the final decision anyway. > > > > > > Sadly, in my company (and there must be more companies like mine), > > management does not turn to the geeks, but rather to the gossip and > > sales talk they heard floating around - and the media ........ > > > > And that is *exactly* the case in my company, too. I have been shouting > for the last four years that Informix is *NOT* dead -- I might as well > be shouting into the dust storms that come thru Phoenix in the late > summer. It is all fine for Mark S. & Jerry K. to go around touting the > technical innovations in IDS 10.0 (and those innovations are very > significant and long overdue), but that is all in vain when upper mgmt > still has the stubborn perception that "Informix is dead, long live DB2" > -- or, worse yet, "let's take another look at Oracle." > > Maybe in smaller organizations the mgmt will defer to the geeks, but the > chasm is too wide in large companies. No offense to all of the SMB's > out there, but I think that this "battle" will be lost or won in the > large companies. I know that IBM knows how to market to upper mgmt, > they have been doing it for years now. They just need to marshal out > the IBM DM execs, and get the message out *directly* to upper IT mgmt in > large companies -- it simply will *not* be heeded coming from the lowly > IT staffers in those companies. The InfoBahns are great for getting out > the technical stuff, but I for one have *not* seen any upper mgmt at > them, simply because they are aimed at the technical people. > > Paul Mosser > > sending to informix-list
"Bernard Dhooghe" <dhoogheb@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:1118305221.976846.272400@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com... > End of the 80's I was promoting and supporting Informix products (SE, > then Turbo, Online), with conviction and pleasure. > IBM's acquisition did not stop migration of Informix customers to > Oracle. > IBM can not even commit this for DB2 (for UDB LUW) and the market > perception is that Oracle has to do it, as it is Oracle's core > business. > DB2 will also loose the battle against Oracle if IBM continues this > way. > IBM should make DB2 UDB LUW a separate company, compete against Oracle > and get market share for the product or die. I'm really getting quite interested in this. Any American correspondent - and in the case of the recent UK Infobahn, speaker - will bang on and on about Oracle being the main competitive threat to Informix. here in England, the concensus against the 5 or 6 resellers here is that we see hardly any defection to Oracle, but we are losing dozens a year to SQL Server. Why should the American and UK experiences be so different - particularly as a significant portion of the Informix->SQL defection is ISV driven? And what's going on in the rest of the world ... ?
Hello, Just as background information: I'm not in America, I'm in Belgium. Speaking about the past, I believe the NewEra failure was the turning point or better, the point of no return for Informix. Smaller solution vendors turned to other development tools and with it to other databases (Oracle, SQL-Server). Oracle did a good job by being the (SQL) reference for larger ISV's (outside the iSeries and mainframe space), with the strong push of HP and SUN. For the future, I would choose a database I can make money with (support or part of a solution). Even if one continue to have sympathy for Informix, I would not put Informix on the list. Defection of resellers or solution vendors from Informix will create some momentary benefits for those who prefer to stay a little longer in this environment, it will not offer in my opinion, long term opportunities. Bernard Dhooghe
I have yet to see Oracle as a "competitive" threat to Informix, as Informix was its own worst enemy. Oracle has never really done anything to hurt Informix, it died due to lack of marketing and a complete lack of innovation in how it was sold. Interestingly enough how Sybase has persisted in spite of it having a lesser product than Informix, to wit, it proves that Informix's problems were more of its own making than anything the market did to it. As I stated before, it's superficial to blame Oracle, and shows a complete lack of understanding of how companies are using and deploying databases. Oracle is succeeding because of applications more than its database. It is the application company with its own database, not necessarily a database company with applications. Informix and non-Oracle people are led to believe that Oracle is on a par with Informix or Sybase, or MS-SQL-Server as a database company, but this is totally flawed thinking. MS-SQL-Server is successful, like Oracle, because it's an application company selling a database. If you want to point to a problem with IBM, it's really DB2 competing with Informix, because you are now on a level playing field, db-vendor vs db-vendor. To your point, as an American, my perception is that Microsoft is not as widely accepted outside the US, thus I would expect other products to be more of a competitive threat than Oracle. Products like MySQL, Linux, non-Microsoft would appear to be more of a problem than just using Oracle as an excuse.
"Data Goob" <datagoob@hotmail.com> wrote in message news:1118326868.053830.79390@g49g2000cwa.googlegroups.com... > To your point, as an American, my perception is that Microsoft is not > as widely accepted outside the US, thus I would expect other products > to be more of a competitive threat than Oracle. Products like MySQL, > Linux, non-Microsoft would appear to be more of a problem than just > using Oracle as an excuse. Whereas the reality here is that it IS Microsoft's SQL Server that is taking all Informix's defecting business (just lost a '300k deal this month to Microsoft) - we and the other resellers I speak to are seeing almost all the defections to SQL Server, hardly any to Oracle (and a big fat ZERO to DB2 incidentally). Now these IBM US speakers are bright guys, not idiots: they presumably are not fighting the wrong enemy from a US perspective. But all the global marketing initiatives, driven as they are from the US, are directed at Oracle as "the enemy", and that is just inappropriate, for our market at least.