Just curious - does anyone have any idea if Raining Data gets any new
sales on D3, or are they just churning the product around in the
existing and ever declining user base. I wonder what the user base is
of D3 and Pick like products. I've filled in quite a few IT surveys
over the years and in the database section, D3 is so obscure there
isn't even a tick box for it, even though about 10 or 15 other common
databases are listed. Are we on a slowly imploding death star?
(Albeit a death star with a very friendly and helpful user base)

John

johnmarshall (AT) xtra (DOT) co.nz wrote:
You can find "pick" in a lot of places, but it is often hiden under the
hood (many car dealerships run on "pick"). Here in Australia I believe
that all of our electronic tax lodgements are handled by a Unidata
system, and you will also find it is deployed in many banks.

Referring to another thread, part of the "visibility" issues that pick
has are because it is an "embedded system" (see IDC white paper thread)

Our green screen users don't see themselves as running "pick" so much
as "AccuTerm" (good one Pete!!), and many people with Universe systems
think that run on Dynamic Connect.

I can't speak with any authority for D3, but the published data from
IBM indicates that their "U2" business is growing faster than "DB2"

Perhaps the reason why "pick" doesn't feature on the check list is the
age old visibility/marketing issue - no doubt many (most?) of the other
names on these survey lists are the type of people that will pay for
this sort of research ... but I'm guessing no-one in the "pick"
community would pony up for .... not even Cache, who seem to have a
higher profile than most

John:

VARs concentrating on churning the users among the various Pick
flavors, rather than developing prospects outside the existing users
base, has always been the main factor in lack of external growth.

However, because of companies like ADP and Triad who combined have
hundreds of thousands of sites, and the embedded Pick market,
datawarehousing applications, undoubtedly also with hundreds of
thousands of sites, the size of the overall Pick market is often
greatly misjudged.

IBM's U2 and OpenQM are undoubtedly growing but hard numbers will
probably never be available until there is a concentrated effort to
make all these various users aware of who the umbrella is and bring
them under it.

Actually, identifying loyal Pick *users* may be much easier than
identifying *loyal* Pick VARs. Most salespeople are order takers and
therefore most VARs, including Pick VARs, tend to drift toward easy
sales and therefore in a VAR market that once was dominated by Pick
resellers, it is probably save to assume that twenty five years later
less than 1% only sell Pick solutions. That does not necessarily mean
that the Pick market has shrunk but it does mean that the Pick market
has not grown in proportion to the overall IT market.

So what can those interested in a growing Pick market do to help the
cause? We all need to become missionaries and we all have to start
preaching and we all have to learn to speak in terms that our prospects
understand. We need to learn to talk multi-dimensional, rather than
multi-value and we need to realize that we cannot waste our sales
efforts on those who have a vested interest in IT as such, rather than
in the overall productivity of the enterprise or organization.

Open Source is slowly but sure making headway with their Total Cost of
Ownership (TCO) message. Pick, represented so far only by OpenQM, has
great potential of being the leading Open Source database of the future
where productivity is the determining factor in TCO equation.

.. . . and, please, let's not argue about whether multi-value or
multi-dimensional is the correct way to describe Pick. If you like to
hear yourself preach, use to mv term. If you like to make converts,
use the md term.

Henry Keultjes hbkeultjesatearthlinkdotnet
Database Scientifics Project http://www.ncolug.org/ppc.htm
Mansfield Ohio USA
Direct 419-525-1111


johnmarshall (AT) xtra (DOT) co.nz wrote:

johnmarshall (AT) xtra (DOT) co.nz wrote:
<www.rainingdata.com/news/newsletter/ summer2006/success2.html>

Ron White

--
Posted via NewsDemon.com - Premium Uncensored Newsgroup Service
------->>>>>>http://www.NewsDemon.com<<<<<<------
Unlimited Access, Anonymous Accounts, Uncensored Broadband Access

Ron White wrote:
Ron:

Because of the break between the / behind newsletter and summer, I
landed on the RD Nerwsletter site where the index showed that the
latest news was 2003.

I then went back and patched the link (the link above is also patched)
and printed the Rover Data Systems newsletter which says it is Spring
2002.

Either RD is not keeping up on posting newsletters, I have the wrong
link, the news is 2002 news with a 2006 date or the 2006 news has a
2002 date.

Henry Keultjes

Don't know about RD and D3, but I *do* know that other MV products are very
successful.

As others have posted, I believe ADP have several thousand Reality systems
installed, and continue to use Reality on the back end (albeit with a web
front end). Reynolds and Reynolds do the same with Unidata (I believe
might be some other MV variant). These are the no 1 and 2 in the
Automotive Dealer Management System market worldwide. We also operate in
this market and are also Multivalue based (jBASE).

Temenos, the owners of jBASE, have 500+ banking installations all based on
either Universe or jBASE. This is a pretty high-scale application (check
www.temenos.com)

As we all know, and has been posted elsewhere, "Pick" and multi-value
generally has been sold through the value-add channel - so end users never
buy a MV database they buy an Application. This is unlike te business
models of Oracle, Microsoft etc, who even when selling through value-add
have a business model which demands you to shout from the rooftops that your
application runs on Oracle, SQL Server etc.


What would be useful is if an independent MV association (Spectrum?) gets
agreement from the all the MV vendors on the no of licences and the no of
seats so that the figures can be added together and published... ie "The
multivalue market has 500,000 licences and 1,000 licencees growing by 50,000
in the past year"... I would have thought that these sort of numbers
would be available under a non-disclosure agreement allowing a combined
figure only to be published?? Some heavy PR would be required to get the
details published....

Simon

--
Simon Verona

<johnmarshall (AT) xtra (DOT) co.nz> wrote

Simon Verona wrote:
Agreed. As best I can tell from a distance, D3 is a product that only
exists today in order to fund products for customers other than D3
customers. In other words, I think it is a cost center that makes
money but does not turn it around in the product, letting the product
die on the vine (it seems to me). UniVision and Reality have their
niches, but I am not familiar with their successes outside of a small
base.

The products that seem to be doing well for customers right now are IBM
U2, Revelation, OpenQM, and jBASE. Cache' is also promising.

So, while D3 has been allowed to rest on what it had and lose many of
its largest customers since Pick died more than a decade ago, sadly it
does not seem to be as healthy as other MV database providers. Many
who are still D3 customers are either moving away from it or deciding
when to move away from it. It would be interesting to know how many D3
customers are dug-in, with no plans to move until they absolutely have
to.

Although even if you are a VAR looking to pick products on which to
base your new application, you are unlikely to come across anyone
marketing their MV database to you for that purpose. So, in that
sense, it is not a market that is thriving in the same way as MySQL or
SQL Server.

laughing

Yes, somehow some marketing that would make it attractive to new VARS
to use the tools would be great. There are some product enhancements,
particularly in the area of user interfaces for developers, that could
be packaged better for this purpose as well. The fact that each of
these vendors has different apis for client/server makes the aggregate
figures less important to prospective developers. Each product is
basically its own island at this point.

Don't know how I started my reply in good spirits and ended on this
downer tone. Ah well, I'll post anyway. Cheers! --dawn

Dawn

When it comes to marketing you confuse the "real" world with the world of
the "marketing" man.

It doesn't matter that their are differences between the MV products.. For
marketing purposes, you can claim that by using a product such as QM (for
example) you are joining a marketplace that includes all the other MV
vendors users. I see no issue with that.

I agree that an active independent association is difficult - the main
problem is funding I would guess - the vendors just don't seem to want to
use their combined market share to develop the opportuities for their
individual products...

However, it can be done... It just needs somebody who is enthusiatic enough
(and has other independent means!) to get the ball rolling! It's a major
job granted.

It sounds like at last IBM are starting to recognise that the U2 database
business has potential. If this is the case, then IBM will no doubt start
pouring some marketing dollars at U2... The rest of the industry needs to
leverage off this spend to join in.

Just some more rambling thoughts on the subject... I'll end up with saying
to Tony that there's no need to say this won't happen... I know it... I'm
just wishing it would!

Also, before anybody else flames me... I've been on record before saying
that I would be willing to plough some money into a joint marketing effort,
so putting my money where my mouth is no problem... Unfortunately, I'm
alone. (Is there anybody there? echo echo echo..... hmmm do these
jokes make sense in written form ??? <G>)

Simon

--
Simon Verona

"dawn" <dawnwolthuis (AT) gmail (DOT) com> wrote

I'll call you and raise you $100 dollars....

I never was good at poker! <G>

Obviously my poker is as good as the average MV vendors marketing...

Simon

--
Simon Verona

"Glen B" <no$pamwebmaster@no$pamforallspec.com> wrote

For what it's worth, we probably average 100-200 new d3 user licenses a
year.