Re: IDS License Revenue

Daniel,

I am often reminded of the folks in Iraq who parade through the streets
at certain times of the year, cutting themselves with knives in a public
display of self mutilation, in very passionate displays of religious
devotion and loyalty to their beliefs. Informix has that same atmosphere
where at certain times and moments everyone, including myself, vent our
feelings. But it has become prayers to a god that doesn't listen. I can
see that it is as ridiculous as those poor religious zealots cutting themselves--yet to the believer it is most sincere, and filled with the
utmost passion. Everyone believes, and everyone hopes their prayers
will be answered. I see tragedy in believing, yet I hope things will
change, that the Informix product will be advertised, promoted, and
developed in the market.

Maybe we're all wrong, and IBM has it right. Maybe they know something
about the marketing of this product that we all missed. Maybe they have
a strategy that will work, even though the best advice from some of the
best in the business would tell them they are wrong. It's interesting
that Oracle seems to have a strategy that everyone understands, the same
for Microsoft, and even MySQL. But it is indeed baffling that one could
understand the how and why Oracle, MySQL, Sybase, Microsoft and others
do their marketing, and yet, IBM is on a different track that few if any
can understand. It is just baffling that IBM and the Informix team have
such a divergent strategy of no advertising for the product, no press
releases, a whimpering developer program, and yet they think the product
will hold its own in the market. Just plain baffling.

Excuse me now, I have to prepare for the next parade, and sharpen my knives.

:-)

-t-


DA Morgan wrote:
Tool wrote:
I am guessing that the geniuses that are
in charge of Informix probably read too many marketing magazines and try to
do things that sound good, but produce little results. Instead they should
try to at the very least copy their competition, and see what happens. We will never see that happen, never, with all the arrogant fucks in charge of the product.

The world needs multiple SQL RDBMS products like it needed multiple word
processors. I'm not saying that is a good thing but it is a thing. For
Informix to survive IBM has got to figure out what it is and why anyone
should buy it rather than DB2: So far they haven't. It is Rdb to Oracle,
Fox to Microsoft, a source of revenue without a compelling reason for
why anyone should use it to start a new project. And that is, as you
state, clearly IBM's failing.

What I find fascinating is that other than you it seems that most here
have confused loyalty with an old friend, the Informix database, for
loyalty to a company slowly but assuredly starving that old friend to death (so no I don't believe the 28% figure except to note that it is
couched as revenue which might mean nothing more than relicensing of
existing customers).

.