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The Informix on Campus issue revisited
I realise this is a sensitive and emotive subject, but I thought I would share my perspective on this:
1. IBM has an Academic Initiative that offers all these things for all IBM's technology. There is also a specific Information Management Academic Initiative Program. All the DB2 on Campus website does is to package that for DB2 specifically. And it does just seem to be DB2 that is doing this. I couldn't, for example, find a "Tivoli on Campus" website. And the DB2 on Campus program is not only staffed by IBMers.
2. The entire Academic Initiative program is voluntary. It is open to anybody who is willing to freely give of their time to promote IBM technology, not just IBMers. In other words, if you felt strongly enough to vote that an IDS on Campus program is long overdue, then it is entirely within your remit to sign up to the program and offer your services to develop courseware and / or deliver it on campuses of your choice.
3. A large part of why it is possible to have the (apparently separate and distinct) DB2 on Campus program is that there are thousands of IBMers who have worked with DB2 over the years (in Global Services and Learning Services, for example) who have been given PBCs that reward them for contributing to programs like this. Unfortunately, we do not have thousands of IBMers who have worked with IDS over the years who have been given PBCs that reward them for contributing to programs like this, so we consequently do not have massive amounts of IDS courseware available to deliver or people able to deliver them. "Luxury" PBCs are also not currently around at the moment. We are working on addressing this shortage of courseware for the program internally, but we don't have sufficient bandwidth for an introduction that is quite as comprehensive as DB2 on Campus.
Can you see where I'm going yet? :-)
The program exists, or an umbrella program exists. But we need people who are prepared to donate their time in the form of developing courseware and also in the form of delivering these courses to their local universities or their alma maters.
So: does anyone here have the time and energy to help the IDS team in IBM to get this going more quickly? I'm sure that I convince the powers that be that we need an IDS on Campus website, if there is sufficient interest in the user community. But we would need to be able to count on you to reach and teach places that we can't and maybe help us to create some of the courseware to share.
Team IDS is, of course, working on this, but we have a lot to do before we can match the breadth of DB2 on Campus and the base of tutors. We need your help.
Are you up for the challenge?
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Spokey, have you been drinking the blue cool aid?
First,
IBM plays musical chairs with its execs. In military terms its called getting your ticket punched. So to read in to the terms of getting someone from outside of the heritage Informix team is a bit misleading. Should we be thankful that Bob P. is in Lotus now? ;-)
The key issue isn't that IBM isn't doing *anything* but that what is being done, is ineffective and not productive.
The case in point, in the US Central North is the following territory: Western PA, Ohio, Northern KY, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, St Louis (Eastern MO), Wisconsin, Minnesota.
In this territory, by my last count, there are only 3 IT Specialists that have IDS in their background. There were two others, one that covers an OEM in Chicagoland, but he's in FL now...
Two are in MI, one in Chicago.
Can anyone add light to this? Am I missing someone?
Thats the point. If we look at other territories no net new IDS IT Specialists are being brought in or certified. Yet there are those who have left IBM. (For whatever reason.)
EMEA, AsiaPac may be different but somehow I don't think so.
Going back to the key issue, there are things that IBM could do to educate the sales force and be effective and productive. They know this, yet they haven't taken action.
I'm not sure what your
I'm not sure what your "ticket punching" point is. IBM likes people to change jobs every couple of years. It's a part of their corporate culture. I don't understand this, and I don't agree with it, but it's far too endemic an issue for me to even discuss. However, if people want to stay on in a specific area, IBM is willing to accommodate that too. Because of the size of IBM, it's not any different to changing jobs every couple of years, something I was quite familiar with before I joined Informix. :-)
You have entirely misunderstood my point: we have a program under way now to certify DB2-heritage people on IDS 11.
Certifying in IDS 11 is extremely tough, I know because I certified in everything else this year at the IIUG conference. I failed my IDS 11 cert by one point (I hadn't studied or prepared at all and wasn't intending to certify -- it was a spur of the moment thing.) So if someone with as much Informix experience as me can't just pass the test at a whim, what chance would someone who has no IDS experience have? They're going to have to study for it and fit it in around their day job, it's going to take time. Amazingly, there is money on the table for this, so you know they're taking it seriously.
They might not have taken action when you were there, but they are taking action now. Results will not be immediate, but the action is being taken. At least give us a chance to try and fix it.
Hold on Tiger!
"Certifying in IDS 11 is extremely tough, I know because I certified in everything else this year at the IIUG conference. I failed my IDS 11 cert by one point (I hadn't studied or prepared at all and wasn't intending to certify -- it was a spur of the moment thing.) So if someone with as much Informix experience as me can't just pass the test at a whim, what chance would someone who has no IDS experience have? They're going to have to study for it and fit it in around their day job, it's going to take time. Amazingly, there is money on the table for this, so you know they're taking it seriously."
Its a bit of too little and too late.
First the certification of the IDS chaps to DB2 took time and effort. Yet it was done from the start.
The reason you failed your IDS certs is that you're a slacker! ;-) (Just kidding :-)
Seriously though, the push to cross train their IT specialists was a known issue for several years. The fact that its now getting done? Great. Fantastic.
But there is still that lag of 6months to 1 yr before the effect will be felt.
Why did it take this long? As to monies behind this? There is no need. Just make it part of their PBC and a requirement to either retain their band level or increase their band level.
Re: The Informix on Campus issue revisited
Spokey,
no, no, no !
As much as I respect you, but I couldn't agree on this.
Why are there no IBMers with the exception of the Informix heritage people that work with IDS ?
Because IBM is doing almost nothing to educate and certificate their own staff on IDS. That is the sad truth !
I'm tired of hearing any lame excuses on this. IBM is constantly loosing business by fighting with
the wrong weapon against Oracle RAC. It is a shame that nobody in IBM upper management has the courage
to say this loud and start the right actions to fix this weak point.
IBM earns good money with IDS but isn't willing to re-invest this money to make IDS more visible on the market. Just squeezing the money out of the existing IDS customers and putting a great amount into the promotion and marketing of DB2 LUW. This is how it still looks from an outside perspective (:-
A handful press releases once a year is NOT marketing !
If the IDS team is too small than IBM needs to hire people to expand it or educate internal people, so that they are able to support the IDS team. This is the way business is done.
You can't rely on the Informix community on this. We are not paid for developing courseware for IBM. We have enough to do defending the existing Informix installations against the competition and to survive in a market in which IBM is not really willing to invest money to expand it (:-
It is IBM that is challenged to fix the well known weak points, NOT the Informix user community !
I just wanted to pick up on
I just wanted to pick up on something else that you said, Eric:
Because IBM is doing almost nothing to educate and certificate their own staff on IDS. That is the sad truth !
This is not true. The IBM Business Unit management team have started a program to address this. It's going to take time to get around the world and there are lots of other things they need to address. However, they are starting to fix the problems that were there, along with all the normal work that comes with starting a new business unit.
I'd also like to point out that the reason these things were not done earlier was that there was no Informix Business Unit, something which Ambuj has fixed -- there was always a technical community, but the Business Unit was DB2 and there were inherent conflicts in that model. I've seen comments made about Ambuj on USENET which I don't think have been at all helpful given the positive things that have happened to IDS from a business perspective have happened on Ambuj's watch.
It's true that we have some catching up to do and it's true that IBM will probably never satisfy everyone, but things are starting to happen. Keep the faith!
And above all, please keep complaining, because the people who have issues but don't raise them will never see those issues fixed! ;-)
This is good news
Spokey,
it is good news that a program has been started by the new Informix Business Unit.
Let's see if it is successful and IBM will be able to regain database market share from Oracle and Microsoft. When the sales team will - depending on the customer needs - choose the right weapon in a sales situation, it should be possible to beat the competition.
Thank you Spokey for your update on this.
-Eric
Luckily, I wasn't expecting
Luckily, I wasn't expecting this reaction. :-)
It's not at all true that there are no IBMers who are not Informix-heritage in IDS: Terri Gerber joined us from Lotus, Barbara Benis who is Direct Sales Lead came from the DB2 side. There are a number of people who have crossed over in terms of both sales and technology -- you could say there are not enough, but you can't say there are none at all.
It's important too, to keep this matter focussed and away from the other aspects of IBM marketing. I'm not commenting on whether IBM is competing in the right markets with the right products or whether IBM is marketing Informix in the most effective way. This is purely about how IBM as an organisation interacts with colleges and universities and this is consistent across all of IBM.
I'm not personally relying on the community for this, nor is IBM: we are developing the courseware internally, but we do not have the funding or the resources for a massive program. If anyone in the community feels strongly enough that they want to change this, the door is open to them. If they don't feel like it's their job, then they have to accept that this will happen at a pace constrained by the availability of resources within IBM.
The fact of the matter is that even if IBM trained up and certified every single DB2-capable resource out there, it is still their personal decision to support the Academic Initiative ... or not! IBM cannot and will not force anyone to go out there and promote IDS on Campus, in the same way that they do not force anyone to out there and support DB2 on Campus. These things are voluntary. Ironically, NOT EVEN IBMers are paid to develop this courseware or provide the training! You need to bear this in mind when ragging on IBM about the difference between DB2 on Campus and IDS on Campus. The difference is the history, not the "now".
You must also remember that IBM has over 15,000 software products in its portfolio. A funded "academic outreach" for all of them would cost enough to put IBM under.
There is no way that we could ever train up enough people to go and teach at every single University in the world, so we would never have the coverage to address the campus "market" to everyone's satisfaction, anyway. I am hoping to address the three or four universities within easy driving range for me, but I still have a day job to do, as does every single person in the forthcoming IDS on Campus program (as well as every single person in the DB2 on Campus program.)
If the community is genuinely frustrated by the pace at which things are happening, then the opportunity exists for them to do something about it directly.
IBM is a massive organisation with many conflicting requirements for its resources. The resources allocated to IDS may not be what we'd like to see, but it's also important to remember that even if we have the exact same resources allocated to IDS as we do to DB2, we are still 10-15 years behind DB2 on campus in terms of a) awareness of the program, b) development of material, c) recruitment of tutors.
I'm afraid that if you're expecting IBM to drop everything and chuck a massive pile of money and people at a program that will only pay off in at best 3 years, you're going to be very disappointed.
Anyway, for what it is worth, I'm actively supporting the program and I'm encouraging everyone I know in IBM to do the same. But you have to remember it's all voluntary, so instead of shooting the messenger, perhaps you should applaud him for his efforts. ;-)
No, I can't agree on this
Spokey,
Terri Gerber and Barbara Benis are managers aren't they ?
Can you name just three people from technical sales that are heritage DB2 and have been certified on IDS since the IBM takeover of Informix in 2001 ? That is the important point.
How can the IBM sales organization recommend the right data server depending on the customer needs when they don't know their own product ? They can't. Look at the Gartner numbers about database market share in 2007. It is obvious that IBM is loosing market share against Oracle and MS SQL Server by constantly fighting with the wrong weapon due to a lack of internal education/certification on IDS.
But let's concentrate on the academic initiatives. I appreciate your personal dedication and the voluntary work you do. The point is, it is voluntary work for the IDS team.
But do you really think the guy who runs the DB2 on Campus blog travels around the world, teaching and promoting DB2, voluntary ?
This is nonsense. He is an IBM employee and is paid for exactly doing this job. He doesn't spend his time voluntary.
BTW, if you read thru his blog you will see also see the Search for the XML superstart contest.
Why don't we see the Search for the IDS Datablade superstar contest or something similar ?
I've great respect regarding the work of the IDS team inside IBM. There is no doubt that you and the other team members are giving their best. But it is obvious that the IDS team is too small, is involved in too many things. Here is the point where IBM is challenged and needs to invest in additional resources, expanding the IDS team !
I'm confident that in the meantime outside IDS experts would help IBM to get the IDS courseware developed soon, if they are paid for it. It is just a matter of investment that IBM needs to do if they are really serious about an IDS on Campus program.
The same issue exists with the literature around IDS. Look at all the DB2 Books that exist. Most of them written by IBM employees and my guess is that this is not voluntary work. I bet that they are allowed to write the books during their working time. On the IDS side we only have Carlton Doe and his upcoming IDS Book. I'm sure that there are more people in the IDS team like Jacques Roy, Guy Bowerman, Alexander Koerner etc. that are capable of writing books on IDS technology. But they are involved in too many other things that eat up their time.
IBM earns good money with selling IDS but it seems that they are not willing to re-invest this money in the promotion of the product. IDS is not open source. Customers pay a lot of money for it and IBM is responsible for staffing the IDS team adequate and can't always rely on the Informix business partners and user community to take over the responsibility for selling the product, marketing the product, developing courseware for it. This is not how serious business is done.
BTW, if you look at the website of the existing IBM Information Management Academic Initiative, it still contains the old "DB2 Information Management Logo" as well as a link to the IDS 10 Information Center. It seems that nobody from the Academic Initiative team recognized that in the meantime IDS 11.1 and 11.5 have been released. This just shows how seriously IBM takes this Academic Initiative Program regarding IDS (:-
That's not completely accurate...
I really don't want to pick a nit and get in to a lot of things that are not 100% accurate.
Yes, not all IBM employees working on IDS or with IDS product management and marketing are heritage Informix. I don't believe Alyse P. came from Informix.
The issue of DB2 books is that the authors that are IBM employees have incentives to write papers and books as part of their way improve their band and rank within IBM.
While there are IDS white papers and some red books, there aren't a lot of non IBM publications. This too could be addressed, but what's the incentive?
This isn't an IBM issue, but an IDS community issue. Which comes first, the demand for the product or the books about the product? (A little of both?)
The challenge is to have someone find a topic about IDS that can attract interest. Again, here's an issue that IBM could incent, but they don't.
Arg. I hate Drupal: I had
Arg. I hate Drupal: I had composed a detailed rebuttal to this and I pressed the wrong button and it is all gone. Forgive me if this version is a bit more blunt. :-)
Can you name just three people from technical sales that are heritage DB2
I can't even do this. They keep changing jobs. However, I can tell you that all the Informix-heritage pre-sales people are still doing Informix pre-sales.
It is obvious that IBM is loosing market share against Oracle and MS SQL Server by constantly fighting with the wrong weapon due to a lack of internal education/certification on IDS.
As I said in my other post, this is being addressed.
But do you really think the guy who runs the DB2 on Campus blog travels around the world, teaching and promoting DB2, voluntary ?
This is nonsense. He is an IBM employee and is paid for exactly doing this job. He doesn't spend his time voluntary.
I don't think he's paid for exactly this job. He's an IBM employee that has managed to persuade his management team to support this for a year or whatever. There is no way that this is a permanent job. I see that the support does not extend to funding a hosted server for the blog, for instance, because it runs on google blogger.
BTW, if you read thru his blog you will see also see the Search for the XML superstart contest.
Why don't we see the Search for the IDS Datablade superstar contest or something similar ?
That question has already been asked within IBM. I don't have an answer as yet.
The same issue exists with the literature around IDS.
I read somewhere a pretty compelling argument that IDS books didn't exist because there was no need for them. A friend of mine helped write the enormous Informix Handbook. He is certainly not retiring off the proceeds. Jacques and Alex have both contributed to IBM RedBooks this year, so you can't say that they are not authoring. Personally, I'd rather they were gainfully employed in making IDS even better and say that less useful employees should be tasked with writing books.
I think the entire argument is spurious: writing books on IDS is not really necessary and I would be worried if there was a thriving market in IDS authoring, because it would mean that the product was becoming difficult to use and the manuals were useless.
So I think we're going to have to agree to disagree on this one.
Customers pay a lot of money for it and IBM is responsible for staffing the IDS team adequate and can't always rely on the Informix business partners and user community to take over the responsibility for selling the product, marketing the product, developing courseware for it. This is not how serious business is done.
As far as selling and marketing are concerned, IBM has very clearly embraced the channel model for selling IDS. I should know, because this is my day job -- supporting business partners in the selling and marketing of IDS, both with technical assistance and funding for the marketing. There is still a direct sales model, but that is slower to change than the channel. You can't say that it's not how serious business is done, in the channel team in IBM, we're very serious about helping our partners do as much business as possible.
As to developing the courseware, well, it would be nice if the user community was prepared to help with that, but internally we will develop it, it will just take longer. You are focusing on the wrong problem, though: creating the courseware is not the problem that requires help from the community. Delivering the courseware to schools, colleges and universities is where we really need help. That is something that we cannot do and it is also something that despite one highly-visible person blogging might suggest, that no sensible business can afford to fund.
If you look at Oracle, they have an ACE Director program which is explicitly unfunded or funded to the most limited of extents. Microsoft doesn't spend a bomb on getting people into different campuses either. All these organisations are looking to the more passionate members of their user communities to help them with this. IDS is no different.
BTW, if you look at the website of the existing IBM Information Management Academic Initiative, it still contains the old "DB2 Information Management Logo" as well as a link to the IDS 10 Information Center. It seems that nobody from the Academic Initiative team recognized that in the meantime IDS 11.1 and 11.5 have been released. This just shows how seriously IBM takes this Academic Initiative Program regarding IDS
Thank you. I have reported this to our marketing people who will hopefully address it ASAP. I think, however, that you are being a little unfair to the AIP: they have 15000 products to look after, it's not surprising if something slips through the cracks from time to time. :-)
Spokey, not quite true...
"I can't even do this. They keep changing jobs. However, I can tell you that all the Informix-heritage pre-sales people are still doing Informix pre-sales."
This is not true.
I can point to the central north territory (US) that would show this to be incorrect. BTW all of the IT Specialists that came in from Informix (not hired after the acquisition) were to be certified on DB2.
While this was under Janet Perna, Ambush hasn't done anything to rectify this disparity.
Sorry. I should make this
Sorry. I should make this clear: I was referring to the UK when I mentioned the tech sales people I know. I'm not sure that I even know anybody at all in US pre-sales, all my US contacts seem to be in the labs for some reason.
The IDS certification for DB2 bods is, however, currently only rolling out in the US. And before anyone else asks, it's under discussion for the rest of the world. However, my best guess is that they wanted to focus on shutting Gumby up first. :-)
So, Ambuj is working on rectifying this disparity.
>Can you name just three
>Can you name just three people from technical sales that are heritage DB2
>>I can't even do this. They keep changing jobs. However, I an tell you that all the Informix-heritage pre-sales people are still doing Informix pre-sales.
You can't name them because they do not exist. IBM has done nothing to certificate their heritage DB2 technical sales people on IDS. However they have done a lot to certificate the heritage IDS people on DB2. And I'm still skeptical that at the end of 2009 you will be able to name at least 3 DB2 heritage technical sales people that have been certified on IDS in the meantime. I'll put this on hold-file :-)
>It is obvious that IBM is loosing market share against Oracle and MS SQL Server by constantly fighting with the wrong weapon due to a lack of internal education/certification on IDS.
>>As I said in my other post, this is being addressed.
Good to hear this. However they will only be able to compete if they know the strengths of IDS. This means at least the technical sales people need to get certified on IDS.
>Why don't we see the Search for the IDS Datablade superstar contest or something similar ?
>>That question has already been asked within IBM. I don't have an answer as yet.
Ok, let's wait for another lame excuse from IBM management :-)
>The same issue exists with the literature around IDS.
>>I read somewhere a pretty compelling argument that IDS books didn't exist because there was no need for them. A friend of mine helped write the enormous Informix Handbook. He is certainly not retiring off the proceeds. Jacques and Alex have both contributed to IBM RedBooks this year, so you can't say that they are not authoring. Personally, I'd rather they were gainfully employed in making IDS even better and say that less useful employees should be tasked with writing books.
I know that Jacques and Alex are authoring and this is highly appreciated. But it makes a difference if you publish something in the form of an IBM Redbook or a book that can be found in the bookshelf of a bookseller. The same is true for articles. Articles published in traditional IT magazines have - independent of their content - a much greater outreach than articles published on IBM developerWorks or the IBM Database Magazine. They attract new people to the product, where IBM developerWorks or the IBM Database Magazine mainly attract existing customers. You have to think outside of the IBM universe on this.
>>I think the entire argument is spurious: writing books on IDS is not really necessary and I would be worried if there was a thriving market in IDS authoring, because it would mean that the product was becoming difficult to use and the manuals were useless.
IDS is in comparison to other data servers compact in the administration and straightforward. But IDS is a full featured data server and requires some ramp-up time. Especially advanced features like replication, datablade development or tuning require some deeper knowledge. A book outside of the normal IBM manuals and Redbooks is always welcome and helps to popularize the product.
>Customers pay a lot of money for it and IBM is responsible for staffing the IDS team adequate and can't always rely on the Informix business partners and user community to take over the responsibility for selling the product, marketing the product, developing courseware for it. This is not how serious business is done.
>>As far as selling and marketing are concerned, IBM has very clearly embraced the channel model for selling IDS. I should know, because this is my day job -- supporting business partners in the selling and marketing of IDS, both with technical assistance and funding for the marketing. There is still a direct sales model, but that is slower to change than the channel. You can't say that it's not how serious business is done, in the channel team in IBM, we're very serious about helping our partners do as much business as possible.
The channel model approach is a good one but it needs a serious product marketing from the vendor behind it. IBM needs to increase the visibility of IDS in the market, needs to attract developers to choose IDS as their database platform. Business partners can bolster this up, but it is IBM who needs to build the groundwork. And as a said before, 2-3 press releases a year is NOT marketing.
>>If you look at Oracle, they have an ACE Director program which is explicitly unfunded or funded to the most limited of extents. Microsoft doesn't spend a bomb on getting people into different campuses either. All these organisations are looking to the more passionate members of their user communities to help them with this. IDS is no different.
Oracle and Microsoft are a different story. Their databases have a great visibility in the market due to their market share and the serious product marketing. Informix had a great visibility in the market in the 90's, not today. So IBM has to investigate a lot more to make IDS visible again in the academic space as well as in the commercial market.
>BTW, if you look at the website of the existing IBM Information Management Academic Initiative, it still contains the old "DB2 Information Management Logo" as well as a link to the IDS 10 Information Center. It seems that nobody from the Academic Initiative team recognized that in the meantime IDS 11.1 and 11.5 have been released. This just shows how seriously IBM takes this Academic Initiative Program regarding IDS
>>Thank you. I have reported this to our marketing people who will hopefully address it ASAP. I think, however, that you are being a little unfair to the AIP: they have 15000 products to look after, it's not surprising if something slips through the cracks from time to time. :-)
If you sort those 15.000 products by revenue, you will probably soon identify 15-30 products that make up the lion's share. Those are the products that AIP should concentrate on. That shouldn't be too hard :-)
Spokey,
I appreciate your work and effort. Please go on with it, it is important ! I'm just trying to describe how the IBM/Informix story looks like from an outside perspective.
-Eric
We could go round the houses
We could go round the houses forever, but there are two points I want to make:
IDS is in comparison to other data servers compact in the administration and straightforward. But IDS is a full featured data server and requires some ramp-up time. Especially advanced features like replication, datablade development or tuning require some deeper knowledge. A book outside of the normal IBM manuals and Redbooks is always welcome and helps to popularize the product.
You can buy hard copy RedBooks from book stores. But booksellers do not see a huge market for Informix books based on historical sales of these books. So even if they get written and published, nobody will stock them in your local bookshop.
(As an aside, I discovered that twice a year, they publish 800-odd books in a single day in the UK. Every other working day, they publish something like 250 books -- talk about information overload!)
And as a said before, 2-3 press releases a year is NOT marketing.
There are different kinds of marketing, though. What you are looking for is advertising, which is not the most cost-effective way of doing marketing. The purpose of marketing, strictiy speaking, is to identify new opportunities. ANY marketing book will tell you that advertising is one of the worst ways of generating leads. IBM spends a lot of money on co-marketing with business partners to identify new opportunities for both the partner and for Informix, but such marketing is much more targeted than advertising.
I would love to build a massive blanket advertising campaign for Informix, but we don't have that luxury right now and I can't say when, if ever, we will. However, it's completely untrue to say that IBM does not market Informix, it's just that it does so in a way that is different to massive advertising campaigns.
Re: We could go round the houses
I stop now going round the houses with this last comment :-)
>I would love to build a massive blanket advertising campaign for Informix, but we don't have that luxury right now and I can't say when, if ever, we will. However, it's completely untrue to say that IBM does not market Informix, it's just that it does so in a way that is different to massive advertising campaigns.
It isn't completely untrue to say that from an outside IBM perspective no serious Informix marketing is noticeable. Many others outside of IBM agree with me on that. We just can't realize this extremely efficient new IBM marketing concept that makes IDS shine like never before. Maybe we need an 'IBM Proofs of Marketing' training to see the light :-)
As I said, a lot depends on
As I said, a lot depends on how you define marketing. It may sound like a cop-out, because you want to see advertising. I want to see advertising and lots of it. But IBM's marketing budget has strict rules on ROI, and identifying deals that came in on the back of an advertising campaign are practically impossible. And that means that getting approval for advertising is nearly impossible, while getting getting funding for mailshots, telemarketing campaigns and the like, is very easy.
(This does not mean that I will stop nagging like a stuck record for advertising. ;-)