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Re: informix market share

From: rkusenet <rkusenet_at_yahoo.com>
Date: Sun, 27 Nov 2005 13:49:34 -0500
Message-ID: <2dnif.1163$wf2.60245@news20.bellglobal.com>


"Bob Jones" <email_at_me.not> wrote in message news:RLmif.34038$6e1.27895_at_newssvr14.news.prodigy.com...

> Ok, let's just talk about LUW then. The market share for Informix was about 5% in 2004, down 1%
> from 2003. That just doesn't make me feel any better. Keep in mind, IBM bought Informix to
> increase its database share on UNIX. So far I am not seeing it happening. If Informix sales
> continue to dwindle, customers will be forced to migrate soon.

of course true. When did I ever dispute this? All I said was that 1.4% is on all platforms, not on LUW.

IBM did not buy Informix to increase. It bought Informix for following reasons:-

Until late 2004, DB2/UDB was embarrassingly deficient in features. It is a matter of another one yr before it will have almost all features expected in an enterprise class database.

I was one of those who suspected IBM's intention back in 2001. Indeed some IBM employees did admit that they never wanted Informix to succeed. But what they saw in next few years after Apr 2001 was that Informix customers are fanatical about their product and the reputation is excellent. That forced them to change their tactics.
I was genuinely surprised to see the features in Informix's latest version 10. IBM has added lot of new exciting features. If they were interested in killing it, why bother keeping Informix up-to-date. This doesn't make sense.

Informix is still toast bcos of FUD. What I think is going to happen is that in another 1/2 yrs DB2 will match Informix in features and performance and at that time many of Informix customer will migrate to DB2. Add to it that no one wants to learn Informix skills, the demise will be further accelerated.

Oracle has more to worry in about a year when IBM will start poaching Oracle customers with a version of DB2 which can stand up to Oracle, if not already. IBM has deep pockets and is into many things. Imagine when they tell customers "get a hardware from us and you will get DB2 free. Why are u paying Oracle so much". I use to work for a giant consulting company till few months back and they lost out a multi million contract to IBM Global Services in NY. I believe my company was winning the bid till about the last day, when an IBM rep wrote a cheque of few million dollars to the customer as cash back if they buy hardware, software and services from IBM. Don't take it literally, but what I mentioned actually happened. It was too tempting for the client to not ink the deal with IBMGS. BTW given the predatory tactics of Larry Ellison, why didn't he buy Informix in 2001. He would have easily killed it by now. Was that a big mistake by him. Is that a reason why he does not want to repeat the mistake with Peoplesoft and Siebel. Received on Sun Nov 27 2005 - 12:49:34 CST

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