HP takes Informix seriously

There are two interesting whitepapers available from IBM's (hardware) competitor HP.

The first one discusses how to to scale up and scale out with IDS 11.5 on HP Integrity Servers thru the HP Virtual Server environment. This is an excellent example that shows the versatility of IDS that is able to scale on a single SMP machine as well as on a cluster of (SMP) machines.

The second whitepaper discusses the rich high availability features of IDS 11.1 and how to integrate them with the cluster solution HP ServiceGuard and a cluster filesystem.

Excerpt:

The HP Virtual Server Environment Reference Architecture described in this 
white paper demonstrates the powerful capabilities of IBM Informix Dynamic 
Server with HP VSE technologies solution. HP VSE technologies such as HP 
Global Workload Manager (gWLM) and HP Serviceguard Cluster File System 
combined with the high availability (HA) and data replication features of 
Informix provide a flexible and highly scalable solution that can dynamically 
adjust to satisfy ever changing customer needs. 

The architecture takes advantage of the Virtual Server Environment for the 
automatic migration of resources to meet workload needs and Informix HA and 
Data Replication features to scale up database resources in a single server 
or scale out database services to additional servers to handle increasing 
demands. 

Together, these technologies create an application infrastructure that 
demonstrates dynamic scale up and down resources as a powerful technique to 
share resources between workloads while meeting business requirements in real 
time. The flexibility of the HP Virtual Server Environment and the powerful high 
availability and scaling features of IDS can function extremely well together 
to satisfy the dynamic, ever changing needs of today’s enterprise customers. 

• HP reference configuration for HP Virtual Server Environment (VSE) and IBM IDS
• IBM Informix high availability features with HP MC/Serviceguard Cluster File System on HP-UX

These whitepapers show that HP takes Informix seriously and has discovered the potential that the MACH 11 technology offers. Actually I would expect such helpful whitepapers (also) from the IBM hardware department. This once again proofs the fact that IBM still doesn't do enough to promote the superior Informix technology internally and not to mention externally.

IBM, don't always rely on third parties to promote your excellent Informix technology ! Start advertising it in a smart but offensive way and I'm sure that - beside making this world a Smarter Planet - you're Informix revenue will (further) rise significantly. The worldwide customers already gave Informix an excellent vote, now it's up to you (IBM) to boost the marketing machine for IDS and articulate the strengths of IDS thru clever advertising.