Just want to pick up a good idea from Gumby that appeared recently in the Informix Newsgroup.

The IIUG 2009 Conference will take place at the end of April in Kansas City. Several IBM high level executives will join the conference and speak to the Informix community. On Wednesday there will be a Q&A session with IBM's Worldwide VP of Database Sales Alyse Passarelli and IBM's Wordwide VP of Database Marketing Inhi Cho.

The idea is to prepare a set of questions that will be answered by Alyse and Inhi during the Q&A session at the conference. I think this is really a good thing as due to the economic recession many of us will probably not be able to share the conference. Such a question list offers the worldwide Informix community the possibility to get their questions directly answered by the IBM individuals responsible for the Informix Sales/Marketing strategy.

Please take the opportunity and send your question regarding IBM Informix Sales/Marketing to eric@informix-zone.com. I'll add you question to the below-mentioned question list. If you don't want your name quoted, please let me know and your question will be listed as anonymous.

The deadline for sending questions is April, the 17th. I'll then send this list of questions officially to IBM as well as the IIUG. So IBM has one additional week to prepare for the answers. There will be no guarantee that the questions will be answered by IBM. But if IBM won't answer them, we probably know how much respect they give to the worldwide Informix user community that are buying their products. So I'm confident that IBM take those questions seriously.

Thank you for your input.

1. 2009-03-31 - Question submitted by: Gumby
   Hey Alyse, Inhi, what is Informix's Q rating? And to be clear, I'm
   not talking about the Q rating for the average American, but the Q
   rating for the average IT professional? (Q rating means brand
   recognition.)
   Just to put the Q rating in perspective, what's the Q rating for
   Oracle? mySQL? SQLServer? heck, lets include Sybase to help make
   Informix look good!
2. 2009-03-31 - Question submitted by: Gumby
   Alyse, what have you done to bring parity in to the sales force so
   that the S&D teams have equal access to IT Specialists that know
   either DB2 or Informix? Preferably both.
   (Hint: This is an old Gumby rant. Besides, I personally told Alyse at
   an IIUG BoD dinner about the problem and how easy it was to fix. Too
   bad she didn't write it down or talk to Jerry K. Heck, I even blasted
   it out here to the point that even the faithful readers who are not
   IBMers could tell you what a PBC is. ;-)
3. 2009-03-31 - Question submitted by: Gumby
   Alyse or Inhi, while its true that nobody makes their database
   purchasing decisions based on a standardized benchmark. (We know that
   they're all rigged... ;-) The benchmark is an indication on how
   willing IBM is to stand behind a product. If IBM isn't going to spend
   money and get in to a 'database war' with Microsoft and concede
   victory in the TPC-E benchmark without a fight, what is IBM willing to
   do? I mean specifically, how does IBM demonstrate that they are making
   a long term commitment to Informix?
4. 2009-03-31 - Question submitted by: Gumby
   Alyse, I was on the last conference call ('chat with the lab'
   series) that talked about Solid and IDS. Ok so I had to drop off
   early. I sent some questions to Denise and Jerry K. (Denise er Dennis,
   covers Moto btw...) One question had to deal with the fact that they
   'benchmarked' using Solid vs DB2 in terms of demonstrating an in-
   memory database versus a disked base solution (IDS and DB2). What is
   IBM's competitive advantage over Oracle's solution of Times Ten and
   Oracle 10g? Don't you think that its a more relative comparison?
5. 2009-03-31 - Question submitted by: Eric
   Alyse and Inhi, when will we see IBM giving something back to the Informix
   community for all the money you earn thru the hard work of the Informix
   distributors, ISV's, partners and customers ?
   To be more precise: When can we expect that IBM reinvests a part of the
   IDS money in a aim-oriented way to create IDS product awareness - that
   currently doesn't exist - in the market ?
6. 2009-31-03 - Question submitted by: Informix Customer
   Why doesn't IBM talk seriously to SAP in order to get IDS
   certified for their new SAP releases ?
   IBM already has a good relationship with SAP. So it is probably only a matter
   of investment in monetary form as well as the willingness to offer
   dedicated men power to SAP. It seems that IBM isn't willing to make this
   investment for IDS contrary to DB2.
7. 2009-04-02 - Question submitted by: Informix Partner
   When will we see IBM offering a free entry level version of Informix
   for production use like the DB2 Express Community Edition ?
   This would help us to defend many smaller Informix installations against
   the open source and competetive pressure.
   Wouldn't Informix Standard Engine be a perfect candidate for that job ?
8. 2009-04-04 - Question submitted by: Informix Customer
   In the past Informix had a very strong relationship with HP. This does not
   seem to be the case in the past few years - what has changed in general?
   Specifically, the beta testing, new HP Hardware platform certifications,
   and joint marketing/licensing initiatives seem to be suffering.
9. 2009-04-09 - Question submitted by: Eric
   Alyse and Inhi, why isn't IBM capable starting an Informix on Campus Program
   without disposing the work to the IIUG ?
   You have at least one dedicated person that is
   traveling around the world and teaching DB2.

   Why don't we see the same engagement from IBM for IDS ?

10. 2009-04-10 - Question submitted by: Informix Partner
    Why doesn't IBM do anything for Informix on their own initiative and always
    needs to be pushed by the community to get things started ?

    From a vendor that claims to be serious about a product, I would expect
    more professionalism, more own initiative, more serious attempts to market
    the product. Even small companies are performing a more professional
    marketing than IBM and it's legions of highly-paid marketing strategists.
    But there is one thing where IBM excels: Paying lip services to the
    faithful Informix community year by year. It is a shame.