Informix Software Inc’s top brass breezed through London recently for a tub-thumping Informix EuroForum. It did not detail the response it is planning this year to Sybase Inc’s data warehouse campaign (CI No 2,563), except to say that it will not attempt to cover all bases of the data warehouse ball-park. There were snipes at Oracle Corp’s distributed lock manager, CA-OpenIngres as a spent force in the market and Sybase’s buy-not-build PowerSoft Corp tools acquisition. Informix is not convinced by Sybase’s performance estimates for IQ Accelerator (CI No 2,563). It claims IQ Accelerator will not improve performance time because it still has to extract data, and Sybase also has a problem with input-output response. Steve Sommer, Informix’s vice-pre sident of marketing, admitted that in previous years Informix had not done a good job of marketing itself. Indeed, it was not long ago that company executives with mainframes would likely not have heard of Informix. Of course, Sommer insisted, all this is a thing of the past. Informix marketing is more focused now with its direct new sales model (CI No 2,526). However, Informix is wary of moving down to the desktop a la Oracle, fighting shy of battling Microsoft Corp and enduring slim margins. Its reticence is also based on the past experience of its unhappy collaboration with Microsoft, which lasted until June last year. The arrangement, announced in 1993, saw Windows NT Advanced Server 3.1 bundled with Informix SE. It gave Microsoft the opportunity to get to the Informix value-added reseller base and get them to convert from Unix to Windows NT. Informix had hoped to capture a portion of the anticipated Windows NT market but admitted there were problems, not least with Microsoft channel operators in Europe who viewed the tie-up as a conflict with Microsoft’s own SQL Server offering. Around 10,000 copies of the bundled software were shipped, 8,000 going through Microsoft, 2,000 via Informix. The alliance, now terminated, has left Informix with an uncertain Windows NT strategy.
