Re: News Flash! Informix FREE! on NT!!!!

Also sprach Mike Segel <mikey@segel.NOSPAM-.KING.OF.MYDOMAIN.-NOSPAM.com> : :Seriously the idea is that if you are a registered developer, you can :pick it up from :their IDN site. (Distribution hasn't been thought out yet. So don't look :for it :any time real soon.) The concept is that you are giving away a tool to :developers :so that they can create products using your product with as little cost :to themselves. It's even better than that, assuming you are a VAR or SI. You get the development engine licenses for free, and the first 50 deployment licenses (i.e. runtime) are also free. This means you can develop and deploy apps against IDS on NT for up to 50 users and incur no cost for the db s/w. That means either you can charge customers less for your product, or pocket the difference yourself. Maintenance is also pretty cheap: $5000 for full IDS, $1500 for WGS (if memory serves). Plus the first 60 days of support is free. However, I believe there may be a few catches, from various angles. First, there was no mention that I was aware of development tools. A db server all by itself is not very useful. Sounds to me like it will still cost you for the SDK to get development moving. Still, it is a substantial decrease in costs, and a net win for the VARs and SIs. Second, it could mean trouble for Informix revenues, at least in the short term. Think about it: if you can run IDS on NT for free, vs. spending serious bucks to run it on Unix, isn't there going to be a big temptation on the parts of some shops to make the switch just to save the $$? Maybe not, if you don't trust MS stuff. I do know at least a couple of the Informix sales reps are worried that this will cut into their sales. Furthermore, who makes the call as to who is a developer? If it simply means registering on a web site before the download, then any smoe could grab themselves a copy for their own use. Not bad for the individual, but not doing much to increase Informix's market share in the big picture. Finally, the same effect as above is going to be realized by resellers & distributors. While IDS on NT may not be the biggest source of revenue for those folks, making it free is taking money our of their pockets. It'll at least be interesting to see how it all pans out. Something else to look for is how MS & Oracle will react - will they follow suite? Can we look forward to all the major s/w vendors competing to see who can give away more of their products for nothing? ;-) ;-) In my opinion, what Informix should be doing, to win market share on both Unix and NT, is to effectively scrap IDS and make IUS (or UDO as they now call it) THE db server from Informix. Even at no cost, IDS is still no more than another commodity database on NT. While it may be notably better than the competition (if you even accept that), it does pretty much the same thing. IUS on NT has NO competition - no one else, that I know of, has extensibility & scalability together in one package, along with 3 dozen or so (currently available or well into development) datablades giving serious value add. Right now, the cost differential makes IUS unattractive to any but those who really know they need to to do what they need to do. I think the current numers are about 1500 IUS sites running. No imagine every IDS site is now an IUS site. Maybe not every one will start extending their database, but it will be more than right now. As they do so, and discover all that it can mean to their applications, you may just get apps being developed that NEED IUS. That would be a good thing for Informix. From there, you start to get a groundswell of blade developers. And you build momentum. To my mind, that holds a lot more potential than an IDS on NT giveaway. But then, what do I know? Dave Dave (posting from home, speaking as a representative of nobody but himself) ********** "Everybody plays the fool, sometimes."