В ежемесячном сборнике новостей от IIUG есть пара интересных исторических фактов - столетие IBM и 10-летие покупки Informix.
Интересно взглянуть на некоторые факты и почитать размышления на эту тему:
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IIUG Insider (Issue #132)
June 2011
(здесь приведены только отрывки из общей рассылки).
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July 1st is the 10th anniversary of the Informix acquisition into the IBM family. During those years IBM invested heavily in the product. Informix was always a leader in the relational database arena and the gap between Informix and its competitors (all of them) has grown since the acquisition. The Informix support is better than ever. I doubt Informix would still be around as an independent company.
But technical superiority is not enough if no one knows about it. The Informix user community does not feel part of the IBM family. We are not delighted. We are grateful for the great investment made by IBM, but without marketing and selling Informix, its technical advantage may not be enough.
Here are some ideas the IIUG board has for marketing and selling Informix. If you have some more let me know. If you disagree I would be happy to be corrected.
- Produce real TPC-C benchmarks to show commitment to the product
- Give Informix press coverage
- Sponsor exhibitor booths at developer and hardware conferences
- Educate the sales force to sell Informix to new customers when it is the best solution
- Bring back vendors that supported Informix in the past
- Give all Data Management products (including Informix) equal coverage at the IOD
- Reach out to universities and colleges
I guess the answer to the question of whether the Informix cup is half full or half empty is: It depends if you are drinking or pouring.
Gary Ben-Israel
IIUG Insider Editor
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The 10th anniversary of the Informix acquisition into the IBM family

June 15th marked the 100th anniversary of IBM being in business; a feat achieved by few companies. With a legacy of innovation, IBM looks forward to the next 100 years and continuing to help make the world a better place. On July 1st, we will celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Informix acquisition into the IBM family. I still remember where I was when I received the news of the acquisition. I was on my way to an off-site Worldwide Support meeting when I received the call informing me of the preliminary agreement to sell the Informix assets to IBM. I was relieved that we would be acquired by a company clearly known as one of the leaders in relational database development. I am proud to say that in the last 10 years, IBM has invested heavily in the Informix portfolio. We've maintained the Informix philosophy of building lasting relationships with our partners and customers. What this means at an engineering level is that we have focused on some very basic tenants that serve our customers well:
Quality - We always prioritize quality over functionality. We prioritize customer issues in a current release over future development.
Performance - Each and every release is faster than the previous.
Ship on Time - Our user community expects a predictable release schedule. We meet our quality and performance objectives and ship on schedule.
Ease of use - We are proud to provide the lowest TCO database in the business. We strive to make each and every new feature easy to use from the beginning, right out of the box.
Customer Service - Our World Wide support team provides the best customer service in the world.
Things have certainly changed over the years but these basic tenants have not. Inside IBM we have access to some of the brightest minds in technology to help solve some of your toughest problems. Early this year, we introduced our new Ultimate Warehouse Edition which includes the Informix Warehouse Accelerator. This technology came from research at the Almaden Research center and was implemented for Informix in conjunction with research from our Boeblingen and Munich labs in Germany. We adopted the agile development process and as a result, have seen a significant improvement in quality and our time to market. During our 1st decade at IBM, we have had over 10 major product announcements introducing well over 500 new features. A large majority of these features have shipped in the last 4 years, including major innovations such as Shared Disk, Multiple Secondary Servers, Flexible Grid, Transaction Survival, Informix Warehouse Accelerator, and Genero.
We have seen our footprint grow significantly over the years. Just in the last year, our partners have delivered over 50 new solutions into the market. As part of IBM's smarter planet initiative, we are excited to see Informix technology help energy providers and consumers better manage our natural resources. We look forward to extending our footprint in areas like Energy and Utilities, Retail, Banking, Healthcare, and Government agencies.
I am grateful to be a part of one of the most talented engineering organizations in the world. I am also proud to be an IBM'er. Of course, we would be nothing without our partners and customers - our Informix community. I thank each of you for your commitment to the Informix technology. I look forward to working with you and the Informix team over the next 10 years to deliver solutions that solve your most pressing business challenges and give you a competitive edge.
Jerry Keesee
IBM World Wide Director, Informix Software

10 Years After: Perspective from the Informix Sales Team

When I'm asked about how it feels to realize that it has been ten years since IBM acquired the Informix, I'm first struck by the thought of "has it really been 10 years!" Then the realization that even yet today we're investing in the product as if it were a startup business. So I have to say that it feels like a new business... with a legacy.
We all remember the statements about "existing applications and new applications" and what some people perceived as the end of Informix. Of course it has not turned out that way - customers around the world are building new applications on Informix and IBM continues to invest in the product as well as the people needed to grow the business.
These past years have shown that Informix technology is still superior to other products in the market and continues to bring customer the reliability and innovation. This year we've seen a first-ever launching of columnar, in-memory data warehouse product offered by IBM on the Linux, Unix, Windows platforms - the Informix Ultimate Warehouse Edition. This product delivers incredible game changing speed for queries without change to existing SQL statements and for the first time truly delivers on the promise of in-line applications analytics combined with operational transaction processing. Other innovations like Flexible Grid give Informix superior operational capability and administrative efficiency for mixed hardware cluster environments. These investments are made with the combined goal response to customer needs and year to year business sales growth.
Although after ten years the Informix product continues to bring new customers and bring new capabilities to our existing customers I am very impressed by the number of former Informix employees, like me, who are still at IBM. We are just as committed to the product and customers as we ever were before the acquisition. I think this is the most distinctive realization - that after ten years there are so many of us here working every day to support our customers and build the business. It is a testament to IBM's commitment to the product, the people, and the future that so many of us are here working together with the goal for Informix of technical leadership and customer commitment. This is the true measure of the past ten years.
Steve Shoaf
IBM World Wide Informix Sales Leader

10 Years After: Perspective from the Informix Marketing Team
Kicking off the next decade of IBM Informix

We began talking about "the next decade of IBM Informix" with the release of Informix 11.7 last year. The alert historians among us noted that we were jumping the gun just a bit. But as we celebrate the actual 10 year anniversary of Informix at IBM on July 1, it is important to reiterate that Informix 11.7 - and the portfolio additions we have made this year - demonstrates an ongoing IBM commitment to Informix software and its loyal community.
Recent additions such as the new Ultimate Warehouse Edition, which accelerates analytic queries 10-100x, and Informix Genero, for accelerating delivery of mobile and cloud based Informix applications, add to exciting new features and editions delivered last year such as Informix Flexible Grid and the no-charge Innovator-C Edition. These new capabilities enable our clients and partners to expand their use of Informix and have helped us attract new users. In fact, in the last 18 months we have added nearly 50 new Informix partners who have or will be delivering more than 50 new solutions powered by IBM Informix.
And speaking of "power"... Another exciting area is the awakening among electricity suppliers and consumers to the proven value of Informix for managing time series data. The number of smart meters is growing dramatically to increase the efficiency of our global use of electricity. Energy suppliers are making the distribution grid more intelligent to better match supply with demand. Industrial consumers are using smart meters within their plants to optimize efficiency in order to reduce energy demand - in one case, a 10% year-to-year reduction. As a result, an amazing amount of new data must be captured and analyzed with great speed and efficiency.
Informix TimeSeries is exciting and "new again" because of its clear role in helping build a Smarter Planet and demonstration of the value of using workload optimized systems - both strategic priorities for IBM. It is specifically optimized for managing and analyzing time-stamped data and delivers dramatically better performance at lower cost than a general purpose relational database system. Its value for better time series data management in smart meter or sensor solutions across industries such as utilities, travel, distribution, health care, and security, represents a great opportunity for introducing the outstanding reliability, manageability and performance of IBM Informix to a whole new generation of clients and partners.
And that's my team's goal for properly kicking off the next decade of IBM Informix.
Bernie Spang
Director Strategy and Marketing
IBM Database Software and Systems
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