Re: Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics...

On Jan 23, 5:04 pm, Ian Michael Gumby <im_gu...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I'm trying to create a new thread so that we can try and stay focused.

I do want to thank Mark for the numbers. Its nice that a competitive
wonk from Oracle to pipe up and show us the 'bigger picture'.

I should add that the numbers from IDC and other research groups are
estimates. They have a certain degree of accuracy, however, they hold
value in terms of demonstrating a market place's trends.

The actual numbers are not important.
What is important is that IBM is trending lower when it comes to the
adoption of its Information Management (Relation Databases)

Since IBM doesn't break out the individual product numbers to the
public, we have to rely on 'rumors' and 'whisper numbers'. (Don't
worry, its not a violation of Rule FD, so knowing these numbers isn't
really verboten.)

These numbers indicate two things.

Specifically in the LUW environment...

1) IDS has continued to grow year over year and quarter over quarter.
2) IDS's rumored growth rate(s) are in the 'double digits'. Meaning
some number > 10%.
(Some rumors peg this number much higher.)

And the verboten rumor? IDS is outselling DB2 in the LUW space.
(This one is something that can not be confirmed.)

What we don't know is what these rumored numbers reflect.
Is the license growth due to IDS's installed base of customers buying
more licenses?
Is there a growth in net new customers?
Is it a combination of both?

The significance is that if a portion of the numbers reflect existing
customers buying net new licenses, it means that they are running
current apps on IDS and its not a 'legacy' platform. If the numbers
include net new customers, it means that there is a longer term growth
that has a larger impact on IBM SWG as a whole.

If IDS is outselling DB2 in the LUW space then it makes sense to 'lead
with IDS', unless there is a specific reason to lead with DB2.

As we two already pointed out several times: You can't sell a product
that
you don't know, so you can't probably lead with a product that you
don't
know. The missing IDS education/certification of the bulk of IBM IT
specialists
really hurts here and IBM constantly misses (potential) money and
(potential)
customers because of this.

However from my point of view IBM upper management already discovered
the problem with DB2 LUW. It is not without reason that they try to
establish
a dual database strategy. They wouldn't do that if DB2 would be a top
selling
product. They are creating some kind of emergency plan. If OS2 -
pardon DB2 -
continues to fail, they have sth. up one's sleeve. It seems that they
are not
betting their future solely on DB2 LUW.

The reason I have to point this out is that most client teams rely on an
SSR and they do not have an assigned Software Sales Specialist. The
SSR is responsible for having a basic understanding of all of the
pillars software products and you have to keep the message simple.

In 2004, I was at club and got to hear one of the Senior VPs talk. He
said that based on IBMs size, a single percentage point in overall
customer satisfaction equated to a billion dollars towards the bottom
line. That is, if customer sat goes up 1%, then you can expect to see
an additional billion dollars towards the bottom line.
If customer sat goes down a %1, well... you end up with a RIF. ;-)

Thats an additional important number. The customer sat score. IDS
continually ranks high. Heck, the user community is doing more that
the company's sales force in selling and promoting IDS. Says a lot,
doesn't it?

Good point. The customers gave Informix an excellent vote (http://
informix-zone.com/vendorrate-informix)
in a recent survey. Did you see any press release from IBM mentioning
this excellent result ?
No, nothing. Even on the main IBM/Informix website: nothing ! It's
just unbelievable. With this customer
satisfaction behind the product, it should be a no-brainer for IBM to
sell IDS to new customers (if IBM sales
would have a clue about the product). What is needed is a marketing
machine that transports such messages
to the rest of the world and not relying on the IIUG to do the work.
As much as I respect the work of the IIUG,
they can only transport those messages to the existing Informix
customers. Unfortunately it isn't a new
message for the existing customers as they were it that gave IDS those
excellent notes in the survey.

Every day I receive about a dozen news messages around Oracle thru my
google alert. Not all of them but a
major part is related to the DBMS. The same is true for MySQL.
Sometimes I receive an Informix related
message, most of the time it is an Ex-Informix employee that has a new
job now, so the string "Informix" is
somewhere in the message text. The unique press releases - I'm not
counting the duplication of such a
unique message on several news sites - that come from IBM about IDS
could be counted by a single
hand in a whole year. I'm really asking me what are the press people
at IBM doing ?


So why doesn't IBM SWG and specifically IM get on board and actually
do the little things that will increase the sales of IDS.

Oh and one last note...
While the guys in the trenches don't care, cross sell / up sell is
very important to Ambush and Steve Mills. It means more revenue for
IBM as a whole. Using IDS to gain *traction* in to the SMB space
should be a critical component of IBM's strategy going forward.

But hey! What do I know?
I just cc'd Ambuj and Steve Mills knowing that this will hit their
admin's inbox and will be filtered before either of them gets a chance
to read it. ;-)

-G

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: With the upcoming IIUG conference, lets put some ideas on the table...
    ... and not the fact that IBM doesn't have money to spend on marketing. ... Informix users know who or what IDS is... ... IBM does DB2 TPC-C benchmarks. ... Seems that Solid doesn't do Time Series. ...
    (comp.databases.informix)
  • Re: An outsiders view on whats wrong with IBM SWG IM pillar
    ... At one point over 2 years ago, there was a rumor that IBM would be ... doing a published benchmark using IDS. ... released several TPC-C benchmarks on DB2 as well as using Sybase. ... forces the sales team to further work to supplant column A. ...
    (comp.databases.informix)
  • Re: When It Couldnt Get Any Better
    ... What do you see as the single biggest reason for DB2 receding and Informix ... IDS is simpler to implement and configure initially simpler to program for (no projects or groups or whatever they're called in DB2, no deciding whether or how to optimize or when), simpler to tune, and performance blows the socks off DB2 in every application zone except hard core large data warehousing. ... It took IBM a long time to realize this, but, now that they have, they've gotten the idea "why work hard to try to convert Orable and MS SQL Server users to DB2 when IDS converts them without trying". ...
    (comp.databases.informix)
  • Re: Why you cant trust IBM when it comes to committing to Informix.
    ... That meant working on an Informix only technology that couldn't readily be adapted to DB2... ... I mean, heck even while at IBM, I couldn't find anyone who could really talk about them... ... It wasn't and if you follow through to today's "web 2.0", the ORDBMs features of IDS should make it the platform of choice in today's e-commerce websites. ...
    (comp.databases.informix)
  • Re: Note to Kate...
    ... Calling the IBM S&D team 'too thick'? ... Customers don't regret making their migration from one product to ... their SAP instance from Informix to DB2. ... SAP and convinced them *not* to support IDS... ...
    (comp.databases.informix)