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Technology Stocks : IFMX - Investment Discussion -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Gregg who wrote (9492)	2/16/1998 3:41:00 PM
From: Lou	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 14631

A reposter posts, and quotes a rebuttal to a post on the Motley Fool IFMX board. A wild path to for a message to get here, but it is information about IFMX This is all from the Motley Fool thread, so read it as if you were at the MF thread. Lou ************************************************** My background, I work for IFMX as a consultant in the Data Warehousing Practice. The statement and let met quote your post: >"NCR's Teradata is the most scaleable database out there, with 2-3x the scaleable performance of the rest; we are seeing resurgance here." >From Teradata Review, NCR's own propaganda rag. They advertize that they out perform Oracle and Informix. [Rebuttal] In the fine print at the bottom they admit they are doing apples to oranges comparison and that cost per 300 GB was $2172 to Informix's $1606. Teradata only runs on NCR, not Sun or HP or IBM. YOu can't be the leader if you don't even run on the leading UNIX platforms. Informix has never lost at apples to apples TPC-D Bench mark. On one bench mark we loaded the data and ran the queries and completed the bench mark, while Oracle was still loading the data. Another assertion: >"Informix has attributed much of its database success to DW wins in customer sites with a different database as the corporate standard. We think this will be difficult to sustain as users require more "solution" oriented DW software purchases (i.e., data movement technology, tools, services, etc. " [Rebuttal] I'm currently working on one of the worlds largest DW(4 Terabytes) at General Motors, where the corp standard is Oracle and DB2. There is unlimited potential here at GM alone. Do you know how much data the worlds largest company has? We are just completing the 2nd of a dozen of DWs and our software licenses have only been purchased for the ones we are working on. Let alone the millions in consultanting services for each DW we complete. A lot of companies are in the "Show me mode" and I don't blame them, but we are showing them. We clearly are the technology leaders in DW and we are releasing a series of tools and engines that will give us a huge differential. The analysts clearly don't have the knowledge to comprend the technology and the rely on the marketing hype. A lot of companies do have DB software still on the shelf that they have not deployed, but if the software can't do the job, then what sense is there in deploying it. Finally, to get away from the "intelligent" conversation, I do believe IFMX has a long way to go , but alot of that is customer confidence. You will see steady license growth in the key areas mentioned. By the way, if going from 100 mill in loses to single mill profit in one quarter is not stellar, then I don't know what is. There were no Q4 "Fire Sales" to pump up Q4 like there were under the wild man. So even though Q1 is traditionally our weakest quarter, that had to due with year end fire sales. We use to give away consultanting, now it cost big bucks for a consultant. IMHO we are the Cadillacs of Databases and the customer will pay the price because ultimately we will be cheaper to own. What good will a $20k piece of software do you if it can't get the job done(MSFT) while a $250K package saves you hundreds of millions a year.

To: Gregg who wrote (9492)	2/16/1998 8:20:00 PM
From: Dave Yenne	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 14631

Gregg, To what do you base your observation on. One good quarter does not a complete turnaround make. Informix had way better EPS for Q4/97 than most expected. Q4 is usually the best revenue quarter for all companies. I believe that there are still too many questions regarding Informix before we'll see a substantial and consistent up swing in the stock price. With the recent pop in the price, there may very well be a lot of profit taking this week which could bring the price back. We also have to see what the consensus analyst opinions will be for 1998. So far there are a few that have raised expectations and a few that are still having a wait and see attitude.I still feel strongly that Informix is a great long term investment, especially for those that got in below $5/share. As for the buyout rumors the only ones I have heard of have come from this thread. I haven't seen any analysts say that Informix is for sale. If you have any information to the contrary please provide it to the thread. We'd all like to see it. I am 99.9% sure that MSFT won't be buying Informix, they won't do anything that might be seen as a validation of the Unix platform. Informix does very little business on NT. God luck...Dave