An interesting view of IBM's database business from a guy most of us know from comp.databases.informix:

• Does your company have a 'sacred cow' ?

At least I would say Mike isn't that wrong with his view of things.

But if IBM wants to capitalize on it's mainframe DB2 customers, it needs to use the right weapon for this. DB2 mainframe is all about reliability and high availability. IDS is known for it's unmatched reliability. IBM has added mainframe-like continuous availability and disaster recovery capabilities to IDS 11/11.5. If you compare the availability capabilities of IDS MACH11 with DB2 LUW HADR, it becomes clear that there is only a single choice for DB2 mainframe customers looking for a database alternative in the distributed space...at least if they plan to stay with IBM :-)