Below you'll find a guest column from Mr. Wolfgang Kögler, founder and chairmain of ORDIX AG, that critically reviews the open IBM letter to the Informix community:

A german version could be found here: Bewertung des offenen IBM Briefs an die Informix Gemeinde.

I am sure that the letter to the Informix community was well-intentioned. However, after 9 years, IBM, and especially Mr. Thomas, still fail to see the damage that has been done to their product Informix.

We perceive the product's significance on every IUG (German Informix User Group) event: the only IBM representatives within the community being nothing more than nice colleagues who have no influence on the decision-making process. Instead of talking about the database system the IUG actually should be dealing with, there are only presentations on the software of another purchased company (Cognos).

But now let's answer this open letter:

Believing that you could lead the product back to the road of success by attracting former MS SQL Server or MySQL customers means to ignore one important issue: each day, we are losing customers and installations and I am referring to the German market only (since I don't care about the American market). It did not cost me much effort to count up all German major customers that gave up Informix (or that are about to do so very soon*). Unsurprisingly, none of them switched to either MS SQL Server nor MySQL.

Believing that the market could be turned by any unknown open source products does not make you a visionary but an illusionist and a bad one, unfortunately, since you are obviously fooling yourself.

Of course it is good to see that IBM is still refining Informix, steadily implementing new features. However, this won't persuade anyone to leave the chosen path. We found out that approximately 90% of all customers make use of only 20-25% of all features. No matter how technophiliac we are - what's the use of new functions that cause additional costs ?: Nothing

Especially if some fundamental items are not provided, e.g.: an alternative to PL/SQL and a product that is given worldwide acceptance. And last but not least: a successful migration from Oracle to Informix within a major corporation.

Where is the German sales strategy? Visiting customers I only realize that IBM tried again to force the customer to migrate to DB2. But seriously: who would buy a new Golf II at the price of a Golf VI?!

Let's face it. The new US Sales Force will fail (if it comes into being at all, since they only decided to build a team (!) - oh what a mammoth project after 9 years of destruction!!!), and none of this will spill over into Germany. I think that the major part of all IBM salespersons cannot even harmonize the Informix product with IBM, if they know it at all. By now, we know that the Sales Force consists of only ONE person for ALL of Europe, Middle East and Africa! Really powerful!

It is not until IBM will invest money to convince hundreds of system houses to port their Oracle products to Informix that the tide will turn. However, as I have already mentioned, this porting requires PL/SQL, a porting support to enable an automated migration, and a commercial appeal for both system house and customer to switch from a healthy and well-fed database provider to an Informix patient who has been in a coma for 8 years.

Frankly, that's exactly what Oracle offers: products, installation basis and support for the migration Informix -> Oracle.

Nothing is going to happen unless there will be SAP for Informix, or at least a comparably important product (here I can only think of Oracle Financial), and at least 3-4 major corporations to claim: Yes, we've dared the change, and it's better, faster and more economic. We could actually dismiss hundreds of Oracle DBA's. Above all, the decision-making processes that have developed during the last 8 years cannot be turned around overnight without aid or trouble.

I guess we're done here. Again, 6 months without considerable change and look at what Mr. Thomas said: "They sent me to finish the race" and I complete in the name of Mr. Thomas: "to bury the product in the next few years." It is only just another coffin nail.

Informix is nothing more than a patient kept alive by artificial nutrition and we're the forlorn nurses on its deathbed.

* about 15 customers who are definitely among the top 100 in Germany, as well as countless federal, regional and communal authorities.

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The editor:
Wolfgang Kögler is founder and CEO of ORDIX AG. ORDIX AG is an IT system and software house, providing services such as the development of individual software applications, IT-services, project management, IT coordination and 20-years of consulting in the field of relational database systems. During the 1990's, the focus of database consulting was clearly on Informix products. Today, however, the amount of Informix consulting is rather marginal. Wolfgang Kögler himself has been working with Informix products since 1988.