Re: Microsoft to announce buyout of Informix

Dave Petheram wrote:
>
> Why would the SEC allow it when they didn't allow Bill to takeover
> Intuit?
>

They probably won't as others have suggested. But nothing surprises me anymore.  

> dp
>
> In <01bc582a$8096f9e0$38c3f326_at_mantis> "James McGovern"
> <mcgovej_at_commandsys.com> writes:
> >
> >When your look at INFORMIX over the last five or so years, think of
> >all the products that have been brought to market by INFORMIX.... Now
> >think of how much the market has taken up the offering's.... How much
> >resources do you think it takes to bring a product to market ? How
> >long do you think it takes to return an overall profit on the product ?
 .....
> > I'm guessing they have lost heaps of doe ray me over the last few
> > years because of diversification.
> >

Diversification or distribution?

I think the diversity is less of an issue more than how the products are distributed. To see the big turn-around, we'll have to see a new way of doing business. Informix can do better, and I think it could happen.

> >One thing is certain, When money in the door slows down and money out
> >the door speeds up your asking for a takeover and I can't think of any
> >other company that has the proven record in software development like
> >Microsoft. When you think Captain Billy boy has taken the idea of
> >creating a dos for dummies environment and ran with it and now look at
> >the giant he has made. I can't wait to see what will happen with
> >INFORMIX and thank god we all have the opportunity to be there at the
> >start.

The market Microsoft has traditionally gone after is in their name, the small single-user unit. From single-user, they've tried to scale up, on THEIR terms. They have learned slowly to scale their products to a multi-user paradigm. But even at that, they resist the UNIX model, with disdain. To adopt a multi-user environment like UNIX, they first have to find a way to create their own UNIX, and then act like they've always supported UNIX, only now they've somehow overcome 20+ years of computing wisdom.

However of late we are seeing even Microsoft on edge, with the same vulnerability to supernova as any other big player out there. The bigger you are the harder you fall. Witness IBM, who is now in the process once again of reinventing themselves.

Informix will do well to understand the Achilles heel of Microsoft, and run with it. If they took a small-scale O/S, say Linux for example, port the latest products to it, it could be a real win. They don't want to end up like Sybase. :-)

I keep thinking Microsoft will catch on to the multi-user market, but now the biggest thing they really want to do is replace Novell business.
This is a total miss of how technology is moving, or where things will ultimately be.

It's so simple, use TCP/IP for networks, and a true multi-tasking O/S for your server. Add clients, yes Win95 PCs for GUIs, if you must, or Telnet VT100s, and you're done. GUI tools are now available to talk to UNIX servers to keep things pretty for the end-user. Data must ultimately
be stored in a data base. UNIX will remain as the best place to keep it managable and secure. NT is a scary platform security-wise, with so much
of NT being undocumented, now would be a good time to replace it.

-- 
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