Hello and happy Monday from the US Midwest.
It’s been a bit since conference, but we are always curious and interested in IBM marketing especially where it concerns Informix, aren’t we?
There was a much anticipated Q&A session at conference with a panel of IBMers including: Alyse Passarelli, Rachael Rusting, Al Martin, Bernie Spang, and Jerry Keesee. The Q&A began with a few slides from each of the panel members, allowing them to give a current status from their corner of the enterprise. While some folks weren’t especially fond of this presentation portion of the Q&A, I didn’t mind it at all. The time was well spent by allowing IBM to respond to the continuing rumblings of the community. There was time for some questions from the audience, but perhaps next year the Q&A time will be expanded to allow more interaction with the audience. Maybe just to break things up, the Q&A keynote could be an afternoon event.
We’ve had 13 quarters of Informix Dynamic Server growth let’s hope the number 13 doesn’t throw us for a loop. IBM has not and is not giving up, Informix is key to their future as it is ours.
Informix software is one of the five new brand marks in Information Management. These brand marks were unveiled at IOD 2008, Las Vegas. I could be wrong, but that is where I first saw the brand marks prominently displayed in the hallways at conference. Brand marks were awarded to the best performers. The other four are: Infosphere, Cognos, Filenet, and DB2. The brand marks are green & black, meaning the word ‘Informix’ is in green and the word ‘software’ is in black. I hope to see these brand marks all over the IBM website hopefully soon!
IBM is investing in emerging countries. That is very good for many people. I can only hope that given the US economic instability we might eventually be seen as an emerging country again. ;-) Hey, a girl can dream!
IBM is breaking down market areas by territory, region, and industry understanding that the days of big bang IT implementation may be over and focused, incremental innovation is how to survive. To this end, 30 new ISVs were added in 2008 and 30+ business partner boot camps have been held. What could be better for Informix? We’ve been asking IBM to bring ISVs into (or back into) the fold and they are making it happen. True, we want it to happen faster but I for one will happily take this progress.
IBM reported that it no longer has to educate the press regarding its stance on Informix. Isn’t it nice to finally let history be history and move on with growth and success? We can all help, in fact, IBM asked for our help. They want and need success stories to publish, clients willing to be quoted. Maybe I looked in the wrong spot, but I found only 19, yes, only 19 Information Management case studies highlighting Informix.
Search for yourself:
http://www-01.ibm.com/software/success/cssdb.nsf/advancedsearchFM?OpenForm&Site=dmmain&cty=en_us
Maybe it’s frustrating that they keep asking for our help, but you know Informix has always been about grassroots, so let’s do it again and help the product (and our career outlooks) grow. Sadly, I did not find a blaringly obvious method of submitting a success story on the IBM site, so please contact your favorite IBM sales or techie person, or a friendly IIUG board member to contribute. If you found the secret link on the IBM site, please comment here and let me know.
Marketing IBM, Marketing Informix - we all play a role.
Norma Jean
