Ask a Smarter Question

Ask your Smarter Question in the comments. We’ll get an IBM expert on it right away.

And while we would love to answer all of your IBM-related questions, Smarter Questions only considers the competitive aspects of IBM technology versus Oracle.

  • Caroline Tan

    Is this site open to external? If we need to find someone to present this site to our competitive sellers in GB, who can I speak with?

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Martin-Hubel/611975783 Martin Hubel

     What can Informix data compression do for me?

    • Anonymous

      I tracked down the right people in Tivoli who could answer the Maximo vs. Oracle question and I got this response.

      ———————
      Oracle has 5 different EAM offerings with a very wide range of functional capabilities.   It would be very difficult to explain key differences with so many products to compare.
      ———————

      Can you provide me any more details about the opportunity so we could narrow our focus? 

  • Jamesvaz

    Is there a comparison between Maximo and Oracle’s asset management software? 

    • Anonymous

      I found the right people in Tivoli who could answer the Maximo vs. Oracle question and I got this response.

      ———————
      Oracle has 5 different EAM offerings with a very wide range of functional capabilities. It would be very difficult to explain key differences with so many products to compare.
      ———————

      Can you provide me any more details about the opportunity so we could narrow our focus?

  • http://www.facebook.com/eric.herber Eric Herber

    Funny – I can’t see a single smarter question coming from IBM that is covering Informix (:-

    While you are talking about the possible future options for Oracle HP/UX customers that are running on Intel Itanium-based servers why don’t you mention that IBM Informix is also an excellent choice for this platform or did I miss something ?

    In fact Informix has a much longer history on HP/UX than DB2 has.

  • http://www.facebook.com/eric.herber Eric Herber

    IBM always talks about the great performance of Informix.

    However we havent seen a single official TPC benchmark covering Informix from IBM for the last 10 years. During this period IBM has published various DB2 benchmarks in the OLTP and Datawarehouse area.

    Why isn’t IBM smart enough to publish a TPC benchmark based on Informix or isn’t Informix a strategic database for IBM ?
     

    • Ian Michael Gumby

      Eric,

      We’ve been through this a couple of times. IBM will never do a TPC-C benchmark because they are currently only doing benchmarks for DB2.

      If you listen to the rumors is that while DB2 is competitive against Oracle in this space, Informix if tuned properly (and I don’t mean benchmark fixing, I mean regular tuning), it will out perform the rest.

      This represents a problem for IBM because their sales model isn’t capable of handling advanced concepts in terms of product positioning. The S&D team isn’t capable of selling solutions. Note this is not SSM but being able to articulate the solution. S&D is more about maintaining the customer relationship.

      IMHO it will take a shift in IBM’s management to fix this problem, however this will not happen. IBM is great at farming their client base. It will require a paradigm shift in the technology to force a change.

  • Erik Stahlhut

    I´m very interested in how IBM will position Informix Warehouse Accelerator against Netezza in the market?

    I hope IBM will be more aggressive in their marketing and sales strategies to win new customer as it was in the past. At the moment I have the feeling that both products compete against each other.

    • Ian Michael Gumby

      Erik,

      The question is how to position IWA period.
      Its an extremely niche product that will only be presented to existing Informix customers who want to extend their OLTP infrastructure to also do some small Data Warehouses. And lets be clear. EDWs are now measured in 100′s of TB or PB range.  IWA is positioned to those who need a ODS or Decision Support system. Its not a scalable solution nor cost effective when considering all of the alternatives.

      That said, Netezza isn’t cost effective against alternatives either.

  • Art Kagel

    What is IBM’s solution to acquiring and storing the massive quantities of data that are produced by “Smarter” projects like smart metering?

    • Ian Michael Gumby

      There is this thing called Hadoop…

  • http://www.facebook.com/eric.herber Eric Herber

    IBM,  I love your new slogan that you have put here after some people asked some real questions:

    “And while we would love to answer all of your IBM-related questions,
    Smarter Questions only considers the competitive aspects of IBM
    technology versus Oracle. ”

    What a complete nonsense. Does this mean that Informix doesn’t compete with Oracle from IBM’s point of view ?

    You invited people to ask questions on this website. Now get your ass up and provide answers to the questions asked in the comments !

  • Anonymous

    Well, considering that Informix with its built-in Timeseries data support can process timeseries data orders of magnitude faster than Oracle can and can store that timeseries data in less than 1/3 the space that Oracle requires, that would seem to qualify for me as a “competitive aspects of IBM technology versus Oracle”, does it not?

    • Ian Michael Gumby

      Art,
      You do realize that Informix’s time series… is already a decade old. ;-)

      Informix unfortunately is not a competitive solution within the blue stack. This isn’t because Informix isn’t a good product, but that IBM doesn’t know how to position it to be competitive.

      • Anonymous

        A decade old and still better at handling large volumes of timeseries data than dedicated timeseries systems.  I know, one of my first jobs was working for a company that marketed a timeseries analysis system with a dedicated, custom built, timeseries database underneath.  It could not come close to the speed, power, and features in Informix Timeseries.  Now it did have a rich set of timeseries analytical functions, but now with the analytics package marketed by Fuzzy Logix that gap is closed and having looked at their offering, I don’t think that even the dedicated analytics of that system (long defunct BTW) was better than what we can have now in Informix.

        Old?  Yes as in venerable, tried and true.  Outdated?  Nope.  Does IBM realize what they have?  Well, sort of.  Right now, I’d liken it to having reached down in the dark to grab a rock and feeling something soft and grainy and squishy.  Your hand knows what it has hold of, but your brain won’t figure it out for a while.

    • Andrew

      From IBM Experts during a recent webinar on a Smart Meter Proof of Concept using Informix TimeSeries:

      - Informix takes about 18 minutes to read the data for 1 million meters, Oracle is taking 7 hours

      - Informix takes about 6 minutes to run each ERCOT report, 25 seconds if the data is cached, Oracle is taking 2 to 7 hours

      - Data space used by Informix is 350GB, Oracle used about 1.3TB

      These seem like competitive aspects of IBM technology versus Oracle that should be talked about here on Smarter Questions

  • Cloudman

    Guys, chill out about IBMs poor marketing of Informix, those of us who are ” in the know” about the reliability and performance of Informix have a huge competitive advantage over our rivals using Oracle having to use twice the hardware and employ expensive DBAs. I make a fortune out of delivering ” as a service” with a fraction of the overheads thanks to Informix.( my customer dont care what the database is, only that my service is alway on)  If you go around telling them our secret you’ll blow my competitive edge. Shhhhhh !

  • Salimasaiju

    Whenever i try to open my compaq laptop ,it starts booting and after 5 to 10 seconds shut down automatically.i’m using windows 7 os.eventhough i can’t shut down properly again starting and shutdown continously.tell me what’s the problem???

  • KUO REX

    Dear IBM Experts,

      Saw an Oracle announcement letter and says :

      Oracle provide a feature of Oracle Database Smart Flash Cache feature to increase I/O throughput and optimize system performance, and this feature (Smart Flash Cache) is only on Solaris OS and OEL. See : http://teletimesinternational.com/global/4049/fujitsu-and-oracle-deliver-enhanced-sparc-enterprise-m3000-server

      From Oracle® Database Release Notes
                 11g Release 2 (11.2) for IBM AIX on POWER Systems (64-Bit) (http://www.filibeto.org/sun/lib/nonsun/oracle/11.2.0.1.0/E11882_01/relnotes.112/e10853/toc.htm)

      Database Smart Flash Cache Support
      Database Smart Flash Cache is supported on Solaris and Oracle Enterprise Linux only.

    Question :  Does AIX 7/ Power Server can benefit SSD or Flash PCI card with Oracle DB 11g R2 to provide similar feature as Oracle’s Smart Cache feature ? 

    Any advise is welcome. :)

    Best Regards,
    – Rex

  • Makinzid43

    how do you update your driver

  • Makinzid43

    how do you update your driver

  • http://twitter.com/kksachin Sachin Kamaladharan

    Oracle has long claimed to have a better TCO than IBM. Considering its a single product versus multiple products from IBM, wanted to check if the argument makes sense or its subjective?

    • Art Kagel

      Don’t know about DB2, but IBM Informix’s TCO is FAR lower than Oracle’s.  IBM had studies commissioned that show this and are available online.  In the real world, I know of many Informix sites with fewer DBAs than would be required for a similar Oracle installation.  Sites with thousands of Informix instances managed by a handful of DBAs.  At one of my former employers, I managed over 50 Informix instances with just two DBAs.  Once we brought in Oracle the number of DBAs skyrocketed to 15 and is still growing.  That’s a real cost!

  • Iunes

    Hi! How can I prove the ROI of BI? Do you now a white paper about? How can I evaluate the telecom impact?