Informix Corp and Sun Microsystems Inc got together yesterday to announce a customized data warehouse and business intelligence offering for telecommunications carriers. The product, which comprises Informix Decision Frontier suite software and Sun’s server hardware, will be offered to all levels of carriers – long distance, local, wireless – and will aim to address specific business problems that the carriers face. For the first bundle, the two have partnered with Paragren Technologies Inc to offer its campaign management software, One-By-One, on the Informix/Sun platform. We know that effective customer marketing is a really big issue for some carriers, said Lyn Simons, Informix’s business development manager, telecommunications, business intelligence, but there are others too, including fraud, customer retention and customer acquisition issues, which we’re also looking at. Simons said customer acquisition – the problems new carriers face in drawing in new customers – will be the next project the two will address.
Informix and Sun are long-standing partners, she said, adding that the two decided to partner for this particular project because they knew carriers were actively seeking ways to help them make their business decisions more easily. In addition, she said there are currently too many complex data warehousing and BI products on offer. What the carriers are asking for is an entire solution, they don’t want to have to mix and match for themselves, she said. Simons added that Informix and Sun are also working together on an e-commerce product, featuring Informix’s i.Sell product, although she said she was unable to give further details at present.
