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Why Cisco counts on IDS
Submitted by eherber on Fri, 2009-11-20 09:57
Did you ever wonder why Cisco favours IDS for their mission critical communication products ?
Here is the answer directly from the Cisco management:
Good to see that a successful and well known company like Cisco speaks up for IDS. There are many other well known companies that rely on IDS as critical component of their IT infratructure. I wish IBM would talk to those customers as well and produce more of those videos.
This would certainly be a much smarter investment in comparison to the money that is wasted for the Smarter Planet crap which doesn't help a single Informix partner or ISV to sell IDS !
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To be fair to IBM
It seems that the "Smarter Planet" message has been very successful for IBM as a whole. I absolutely agree that it does little to help Informix ISV's -- unless Informix ISV's have a solution that aligns with that message. I am working with an ISV who does have solutions that align with that message and it is working very well for him.
So technically, your statement is wrong: Smarter Planet is helping a single Informix partner sell IDS. But it's not particularly helpful to the ISV community as a whole, unless they can find a way of aligning themselves to the message. You could argue that ISV's shouldn't have to change to match IBM's whim, but we are where we are.
"Smarter Planet" or it couldn't get more absurd, could it ?
Spokey,
I understand that you need to defend the "marketing strategy" of your employer but:
Looking at the last IBM quarterly results I can see zero growth for the Information Management division. Taking a look at the Gartner 2008 DBMS market share numbers I can see that Oracle, Microsoft and even Sybase are growing faster than IBM in the database market (:- So I wouldn't call the IBM Smarter Planet marketing successful, at least not for IBM Information Management.
During the last weeks I spoke with various Informix partners and customers about IBM's "marketing strategy". They are almost all not amused about what they are seeing. It is getting more and more difficult to justify the adoption of IDS in the companies. Informix is no longer on the radar of the upper management while Oracle and MS SQL Server is. So they always need to justify themselves why they count on Informix.
Instead of supporting the faithful Informix partners and Informix advocates in the companies by creating product awareness for IDS in the marketplace, IBM Marketing is wasting the earned IDS money for absurd advertisings like this one:
This is an expensive two-page advertisement in German's most respected IT magazine named IX. On the first page of the advertisement there is a half side of text about how to extract valuable information out of data, then rest of the first page is - with the exception of the IBM logo - blank. The second page of the advertisement contains a very "meaningful" graphic :-)
Looking at the difficult situation that Informix partners, ISV's and customer advocates are currently faced with and then seeing such an advertisement from IBM, I would simply call it an impertinence from IBM's marketing strategists ! Just by removing the meaningless graphic from the second page and adding the Informix and Cognos Logo together with some facts about those IBM products would certainly help many many Informix (and Cognos) partners. Unfortunately it seems that IBM is not willing to it's partners (:-
The clear results of the current poll as well as some older polls show that IBM (Marketing) is not doing enough for the faithful Informix partners and advocates. There are other companies that do a lot more to make their products well known in the market and the Informix community requests the same from IBM.
While IBM doesn't like to hear that and probably continues to ignore those claims, it should not be surprised, if Informix partners and advocates start looking for alternatives outside of IBM (:-
The name is Informix
And I'm still explaining professionals around me that its Informix and not Informatica :(
IBM should leave their glasshouse
Vikas,
you are right and I know other Informix advocates that have the same problem. Unfortunately IBM - while sitting in their "Smarter Planet glasshouse" - doesn't seem to recognize that there exists no product awareness for Informix in the market.
I would be happy seeing IBM leaving their glasshouse and beginning to support their faithful Informix partners and advocates. But currently it seems to me that they just love to squeeze the money out of the Informix customers and not willing to invest a single dollar to push things really forward (:-
I'm sure that at the next IIUG conference, the IBM Marketing strategists will again report a year of "screaming success" in terms of Informix marketing and they'll claim that 2010 will even get better. But in fact, nothing will really change and the product Informix remains a prototype.
At the last workshop of the German IUG, IBM has already been criticized for their lack of serious marketing for Informix and we will continue to do so here in Germany. However I would like to see the IIUG also taking a more critical standpoint related to the IBM Informix "marketing strategy". If we continue to accept IBM's approach, nothing ever will change !
Advertising vs Marketing
IBM actually does plenty of marketing for Informix, at least it does here in the UK. However, I suspect you're thinking of product advertising, which IBM doesn't do for any of its brands, anywhere in the world.
Or so I'm told, anyway.
There are two constraints IBM has on the idea of product advertising:
1. There are squillions of products in IBM Software Group alone - if Informix gets advertised, then why should Tivoli Storage Manager not also get advertised? So just keeping on top of the advertising would be a logistical nightmare.
2. IBM likes to be able to show quantifiable results from its marketing spend. Unfortunately, spending money on product advertising rarely leads to an accountable sale, whereas a telemarketing campaign can show we made 200 calls and we got 50 sales (or whatever). Same for a mailshot.
Now, I'm not saying whether or not I agree with the points above, but these are the reasons why I've been told IBM will not do product advertising.
Marketing vs Serious Marketing
Spokey,
good to hear that IBM does plenty of marketing for Informix in UK. In Germany, I can see almost no activity from IBM Marketing. But it might be, that people not wearing IBM eyeglasses, have a different understanding what plenty and serious marketing is :-)
You have to compare like with like. Tivoli is a brand and thus there exists much more product awareness for the Tivoli products - including Tivoli Storage Manager - in comparison to Informix which is well hidden under the Information Management brand.
Although I believe that IBM makes 80-90% of their revenues in the software business with a few key products. So I don't request from IBM that they advertise all the other crap that they own, just the few key products that make most of their revenue. I'm sure that Informix is one of those products. BTW, if you have followed the discussions on c.d.i. this year, some DB2 guys would like to see
more product specific advertising/marketing from IBM as well.
Let's compare IDS to DB2. That is more an "apple/apple" comparison:
The situation for DB2 - in terms of product awareness - is quite more comfortable than that of IDS. In the first 5-6 years after the takeover of Informix in 2001, IBM (Janet P.) simply destroyed a valuable Informix business. Things have changed since then. IBM today tries at least to preserve the existing Informix business but does too little to make Informix an attractive choice for new customers. The old message that Informix is a "dead horse" while DB2 is the future has been well established by IBM in the market and - believe it or not - is still in the heads at least of the upper management.
SAP is another weak point. Informix (including IDS 11.5) is still supported for certain R3 releases but the new SAP software will no longer run on it. I honestly believe that, if someone from the top management (Steve Mills for example) would talk seriously to the SAP top management and would be willing to make some admissions (i.e. delivering men power for porting new SAP releases to IDS), SAP would consider re-supporting IDS. From my point of view such a deal would be a win-win situation: SAP could protect the still existing Informix installations from migrating to Oracle and would have an excellent database alternative for new installation in segments where DB2 doesn't fit that well. IBM on the other side would create tremendous product awareness for IDS with such a deal. This would be an important sign to other software vendors as well that Informix is taken seriously by SAP (and IBM).
So from my point of view, it is only a matter of investment, an investment that IBM is willing to do for DB2 but not for IDS (:-
But not only has DB2 the SAP advantage, if you look at the results last last poll, it becomes clear, that DB2 receives significant more marketing coverage by IBM than IDS does. For example I haven't seen a single press release from IBM at the IOD for IDS. Even the new IDS/BladeServer bundles haven't - with the exception of some some twitter messages - been passed to the press. That is simply annoying (:-
I won't discuss the other areas here where DB2 is favored by IBM and IDS is still treated as 'Cinderella'. You probably now them.
I'm only reflecting what other Informix Partners and Customer Advocates tell me again and again as well as the experiences I made myself:
There exists no product awareness for Informix in the market and IBM does much too little to change this ! Advertising or at least Co-Advertising with other IBM products (Cognos, BladeServers...) would definitely help to create product awareness for Informix even in the upper management.
It seems that Informix Partners, ISV's, Distributors and Customers are only 2nd class citizens for IBM (:-
Price/performance and measurement
Hi Eric,
As I said, IBM is very conscious of how it spends its marketing money. And while I, personally, feel that it would be nice to see full-page adverts in the computer and broadsheet press advertising Informix, I have to agree that a) this kind of marketing is not very price-efficient and b) it is also hard to measure how effective it is.
Assuming that IBM has some money to spend on marketing and they can either a) spend it on some adverts but not be able to show a single sale as a direct consequence of the advert or b) run a telemarketing campaign which generates a million dollars in directly attributable revenue, which one do you think it would choose to spend its money on?
Re: Price/performance and measurement
Spokey,
with a telemarketing campaign you won't sell a single IDS license to a new, non-informix customer.
This only helps to squeeze the money out of the existing customers, who might already forgot that they have some Informix instances running and have run out of maintenance. They might think about it and order an upgrade.
Telemarketing campaigns are probably a very efficient method as they only cost a small amount of money and - looking at the high IDS prices - IBM earns a lot more. Compliance inspections are another cost efficient way for IBM, but don't lead to a single new Informix customer.
This only commits the fact that IBM is not willing to invest real money in the promotion of Informix. Telemarketing campaigns don't help to bring Informix back on the radar of the upper management.
Oracle or Microsoft with it's strong market presence could choose such a method as they are established enough but for IBM Informix it leads to a dying in small increments (:-