Just to keep you informed:

Today I've officially send the marketing/sales question list to IBM's Worldwide VP of Database Sales Alyse Passarelli and IBM's Wordwide VP of Database Marketing Inhi Cho. We will soon see if they take the complaints of the Informix user community seriously and answer our questions in some form.

For those of you who like to follow The Informix Zone on Twitter, here is the URL:

• http://twitter.com/InformixZone

Thank you.

Not till the last Informix-Partner has been scared away,
the last Informix-Distributor has capitulated,
the last Informix-Customer has switched to Oracle,
not till then you will recognize that an ecosystem
isn't survivable, if the vendor isn't willing to
reinvest the earned money to create real product
awareness in the market.

I'm happy to introduce the new Informix video from Cursor Software AG.

Cursor Software AG is one of the three German Informix distributors and distributes products from the IBM Information
Management Software portfolio.

Well done !

Just want to pick up a good idea from Gumby that appeared recently in the Informix Newsgroup.

As I browsed thru the current issue of the german computerweek, I saw a picture of my old chief Thomas Garmhausen und a short summary about the history of his company "Garmhausen & Partner". I started my professional career about 20 years ago at "Garmhausen & Partner".

Read what Irshad Raihan - IBM worldwide competetive strategy lead data management - has to say about the new IDS Warehouse feature:

• The Informix Warehouse is Here!

Great news for existing Informix customers as well as new customers that are looking for an extremely efficient data server powering their enterprise data warehouse: IBM announced the availability of the IDS Warehouse Feature.

For details please take a look at the various press announcements, blog entries and the new documentation available:

• Fernando Nunes Blog

YouTube Informix Videos

Two new IDS videos - at least I haven't seen them before - on YouTube:

The Clown gets to the point and IBM responds

The Clown speaks out what the Informix User Community expects from IBM:

"Prototypes" and Marketing Strategies

Imagine you buy an innovative car from a big vendor. A car that has a considerable
lower consumption than competetive models, that has a fantastic reliability
as well as versatility that makes you highly pleased every day you drive it,
But there is a single handicap:

The manufacturer delivers the car as some kind of "prototype", only to
handpicked customers with camouflaged exterior and no advertising.

Your friends show you the latest magazine articles, press releases, advertising materials

Nominate an IBM Data Champion until January the 31th, 2009

Bank of Chengdu powered by IBM Informix

Just another example that demonstrates why IDS is IBM's unchallenged flagship data server for powering highly critical applications that require 24x7 availability on Unix/Linux based systems:

Excerpt:

In addition to its high performance and high availability, the Power 595 server 
can scale on demand, so it can support Bank of Chengdu’s long-term value-added business. 
The new core banking system will run IBM Informix database for Bank of Chengdu’s 

And the winner is: IBM Informix Dynamic Server

Excerpt

(german content)

pirAMide "business manager" - Ready for IDS

Die Firma pirAMide Informatik GmbH stellt eine CRM-Software vor, die als SaaS (Software as a Service) Anwendung konzepiert ist. Geschäftsführer der pirAMide Informatik GmbH ist Dr. Julio Aspiazu, vielen bekannt als langjähriger Vorsitzender der Deutschen Informix User Group (IUG).

Reminder: Informix Tech Day in Strasbourg

Update 2009-01-11 - Final Agenda

Here is the final Agenda for the Informix Tech Day:

• Agenda Informix Tech Day

Multicarta relies on IBM Informix for Credit Card Authorization

Multicarta Ltd., a Russian credit card authorization processor, relies on IBM IDS running in a Linux Cluster environment with SteelEye LifeKeeper software:

Russian Credit Card Authorization Centre Reduces Downtime To Under 15 Minutes A Year

According to the press release, the system availability is about 99.997% (15 minutes max downtime per year). This sounds quite good from an availability point of view. However this is still a traditional active/passive cluster. Moving to the IDS MACH11 technology would allow them to dynamically scale the IDS cluster by adding additional SDS nodes on the fly, achieving load balancing thru the connection manager, replicating the data to a disaster recovery center via HDR or keeping bunker backups via RSS. These are some of the benefits that the MACH11 technology offers in comparison to a traditional active/passive cluster.

A new Planet is born

We are surrounded by so many "Database Planets" like:

(german content)

databasepro Magazin: IDS V11.5

Die brandneue Zeitschrift databasepro fokussiert sich auf das Thema Datenbanken und bietet interessante und hilfreiche Informationen für jeden, der in diesem Umfeld tätig ist.

In der Erstausgabe 06/2008 (Nov/Dez) finden Sie meinen Artikel zu IDS V11.5: