Re: Powersoft to drop Oracle support?

In article <3ee7hr$sv9_at_kapall.strengur.is> snorri_at_kapall.strengur.is (Snorri Bergmann) writes:
>From: snorri_at_kapall.strengur.is (Snorri Bergmann)
>Subject: Re: Powersoft to drop Oracle support?
>Date: 4 Jan 1995 13:24:11 GMT

Hi Snorri.

>When was this? NewEra Was released in november. In regards to the difficaulty
>of learning NewEra is the fact that it is fully object-oriented, and if your
>group has no OO background, yes it might be too difficault for the group to
>evaluate.
>If you are an Oracle shop and don't have an Informix engine installed
>you might not be able to use NewEra for development, only for runtimes. The SE
>local engine for Windows will ship in the jan-feb timeframe (I think), and will be
>included with NewEra, so then you will not have any difficaulty of evaluating it.

I speak with Informix quite regularly (their marketing and corporate communications people, and they realize that my company is quite capable of evaluating their product. As of our last meeting they are no longer claiming that the product is too complicate (it is a big embarassment for them when I use this explanation in my seminars), but they still have not come up with a reason why they aren't allowing me to evaluate the product. They are also aware that we have the staff in house to evaluate their New Era and that we have Informix in-house. At this point the ball is in their court but I think it would be accurate to say that they would prefer that I not evaluate their product.

>> This may be true, but if NewEra is too complex for my group to evaluate
 then >> the product's target market must be minute.
>>

>Belive me, the product is not "not going anywhere". What gives you this feeling?
>The 2-pages ads in Computerworld? I've been using Informix since 1988 and they
>have *NEVER* before advertised or emphasized a product in this way.

Spending money on advertising is usually not sufficent. In fact it is a very lazy way to sell product. Informix really has no idea how to market and sell products. If you look at how Oracle is about to launch Project X vs. how Informix lauched NewEra you will see how inadequate Informix's efforts are. But frankly, I think that they are not putting that much effort into the product at this time because I do not think it is ready for the mass market. So while other tools like Visual Basic are selling in the hundreds of thousands, NewEra is selling probably in the hundreds.

Thanks for sharing your experiences with NewEra. It should be interesting watching the product evolve. I think that Informix is in big trouble at this point and it is probably peaking in popularity. In my discussions with seminar attendees who are planning for their client/server environments there is almost no interest in Informix or its tools. I would say that Oracle gets about a 85% interest level, Sybase about 60%, Micrsoft SQL Server about 20% (a big drop for them after the split with Sybase), IBM about 15% and Informix less than 10%. I think Informix has stood still too long and NewEra doesn't have much chance in pulling them out. What you are seeing at this time is the results of sales efforts over the past two years, the next year or two will tell the tale for Informix (just like it took a few years for Ingres to see the results of its poor marketing efforts). At this point the prognosis for Informix looks poor.

In regards to CDE and Project X, I expect that many customers who are currently using CDE or SQL*Forms will switch over to Project X. There is a degree of overlap. But Project X does not - at least at this point in time - have all of the advanced capabilities of CDE (e.g., repository) so there is clear market segmentation. But I believe that Project X's ease of use and cost structure will win the day over CDE in many situations and will certainly sell a magnitude more product than NewEra will ever sell - if for no other reason, Oracle knows how to market and sell.

It should be interesting to revisit this issue once NewEra has been out for a period of time and Project X is released.

Thanks for your thoughts.

Regards,

Rich Received on Wed Jan 04 1995 - 09:38:57 CET