Hello!

I understand that Car Dealer Software in the US is dominated by the two
companies Reynolds and Reynolds and ADS. Is this correct?

Are both of these based upon multi-value databases?

Does anyone know which? Evidence such as web links would be particularly
helpful.

I have found the Reynolds and Reynolds website but I am having
difficulty in locating the ADS website.

All information gratefully received. This is for academic work.


John Bend

That is because it is ADP not ADS

John Bend wrote:
It is ADP.

Others will know better and might have links that prove that the
products are based on Pick, but I think the answer is yes. ADP uses
their own flavor of Pick that started with Reality. There are recent
postings about ADP in this forum that might help.

adp.com or for the dealer software try
http://www.dealersuite.com/rcs/ADP/p...page/index.jsp

In case you don't get everything you need here, you might also want to
ask on the u2-users list for links related to Reynolds & Reynolds since
they use UniVerse. Check
http://www.u2ug.org/index.php?name=N...article&sid=33 The original
article pointed to is no longer there, so maybe someone else can find
it.

Hope this helps. --dawn

Thanks Dawn.

Yes, it was an error entering ADS rather than ADP. Richard Brown has
also kindly confirmed that www.adp.com have their own version of Pick.

Reynolds and Reynolds use U2 you say? That would help explain the IBM
hardware partnership I suppose.

Thanks for the info and the links. The U2 link in particular is gold dust.

John



dawn wrote:

John Bend wrote:
Yes, if, by "ADS," you mean "ADP Dealer Services."

--
frosty

John,

If you are trying to locate links on these sites to "prove" that they
use multi-value, that could be difficult. The 'Brand', and technology,
that they each promote is their own (eg: R&R or ADP) - in much the same
way that SAP promotes "SAP" rather than Oracle, DB2 etc.

Even the users of these systems (quite rightly IMHO) think of
themselves as using a Reynolds & Reynolds system - this is the name
that has traction in the market, rather than the database, operating
system or terminal emulation product that is used.

Of course, this is also one of the places where the wheels have fallen
off the multi-value barrow - there has been no single, common marketing
"hook" that these people have hung their wares on.

Some of this has been driven by market conditions. For example, here in
Australia one of the other major car dealership products was (is) from
Newmans, which is also Pick based - if you promote the database, then
you may be helping the 'competition'

With the benefit of hindsight, if there HAD been some form of
consolidated marketing, where the breadth and reach of MV systems
technology had been publicised, then our overall outlook may have been
different.

I know that Gus Giobbi (Spectrum) put out a "challenge" a few years ago
for everyone to get behind & push the 'multi-value' banner. Some people
did, and Revelation now proudly shows the Multi-Value cube on their
marketing material, but the challenge wasn't answered by the
VARs/Application Providers (who of course are the self same group that
bemoan the lack of marketing - a real case of 'Doctor, heal yourself')
- nor do you see IBM wanting to back this particular "open standards
push" .... perhaps if they owned ALL of the players, but even then the
REALITY is that they would PICK the DB2 banner to promote

There are many other application areas where multi-valued solutions
play (or have played) a dominant role - but nowadays more often then
not we see these solutions being acquired by more agressive companies
(eg: Epicor) that have no desire to see their mv roots exposed

Ross Ferris wrote:

My current employer was feeling left out in the cold a bit because they
use a U2 DBMS and were sure it was a dying technology. They were
looking to see what DBMS's other people in their sector were using with
a view towards migration. It came as a complete surprise when I pointed
out to them that the world leading provider of software to their sector
(banking) uses Pick-like - jBase and UniVerse (and, more recently,
Oracle) as the underlying database (Temenos & Globus/T2). "World
leading" according to the BOSS report, btw. In their case, they started
out with UniVerse - and for a long time UniVerse and UniData seemed to
want to deny that they were Pick-alikes, or in any way part of the Pick
family. That's where the lack of cohesion in the sector stems from, I
believe. Pick was seen to be a four letter word for some.

Mike.

It's quite amusing, but I would suspect that the dominant database in use in
car dealerships is actually MultiValue of one kind of another.

Certainly, between ADP and R&R they must have 80% of the US car/truck
market... I know of 2 MV players in the UK (ourselves included)...

What's even more interesting is that both ADP and R&R have in the past tried
to migrate away from MV. Both have failed to do so (R&R in quite expensive
style !). Instead they both seem to be using MV as more of a backend
database with "mainstream" technology doing the User-Interface.

Maybe MV generically should be promoted as being an "embedded" database - I
believe this marketing model underlines Cache's success as well as products
such as mySQL from the "mainstream" world..

Anyways, what is this "mainstream" thing anyways?? Everywhere I look I
see MV used within top-ranking application software... This has always been
the success of MV (right back to the Pick days).

The problem as already pointed out is marketing, or lack of it. IBM
markets U2 to developers, Raining Data doesn't appear to have any cohesive
marketing strategy at all. Other players have a variety of marketing
efforts. The key thing about most of them (cache excepted) is that they
tend to focus their marketing at developers already using MV. In this way,
the MV market will struggle to expand.

One solution is for an independent marketing organisation - perhaps one that
VARS, Developers and people like jBASE/Northgate/Cache etc could subscribe
to which promote MV database applications in general... However, this is
unlikely to happen... if Northgate spend marketing dollars, then want it
promoting Reality not MV!.

All we can hope for is for further consolidation in the marketplace.. With
a single dominant vendor, then we would have something to shout about.

Is 2006 a year for consolidation?

regards
Simon
"Ross Ferris" <rossf (AT) stamina (DOT) com.au> wrote

I've been offering a marketing plan as described in the quotes below
for years, but no one seems interested. Maybe I've been too subtle,
too vague, or maybe I'm just the wrong guy to offer it, but I think it
needs to start somewhere.

The proposal is to get co-op marketing funds from many
application vendors who specialize in a particular market segment, and
then to promote all of them together in front of their prospective
end-user market as sort of an "MV Inside" sort of marketing campaign.
Horizonal app providers have the luxury of being able to advertise to
a broader base than vertical providers, and would therefore have more
opportunities.
Individually companies have a hard time marketing to the right
audience for sheer lack of funds. Together they can do much better.
But competitors in a vertical market wouldn't trust one another to
pool their funds and defend the interests of each individual
participant, so I propose that Nebula R&D serve as a trusted
non-profit agency for the purpose.
In such advertising one would find company names and brief
feature-bullets where possible, but the contact number/address would
be for here at Nebula R&D. When calls come in we'll briefly try to
identify the user needs, then introduce the prospects to the "member
companies". We'd help to manage the process, ensure that the
prospects questions are answered, and that they are presented with all
possible options. The end result should be that the prospects make a
purchase within the MV market, and that they are also aware of the
wealth of third-party offerings for reporting, connectivity, tools,
and the like.
With this information end-users should feel more comfortable
with their decisions because they know that there are solutions
available which preclude the need to look outside of our market.
Monitoring this process also keeps some VARs in check - I
think VARs would tend to manage things a bit more carefully if they
and the end-user both know that there are competitors out there
willing and able to take care of their clients if they don't want to.
Traditionally a bad MV VAR will simply let go of one or many
end-users, and we all lose in the process.

With all of the marketing campaigns that IBM does for DB2 and related
applications, and their claims to support their SMB VAR relationships,
I am amazed to see IBM doing absolutely nothing like this to support
their MV application reseller channel. Same goes for the other DBMS
vendors. Raining Data has a list of their VARs and what apps they
provide, but they do not position themselves to broker end-user
requests to their reseller channel, and they certainly don't "manage"
the process once they've done a referral. You'd think DBMS providers
would be a bit more motivated to understand their reseller offerings
and then actively help resellers to do their marketing.

As a new jBASE Distributor, and in the absence of any program by jBASE
International themselves to do this, it's my hope to provide this sort
of service for VARs who sign up with us. Some of this is described on
our web page describing our new Distribution Channel:
http:// removethisNebula-RnD.com/channel.htm
I'm very motivated to help VARs to market to new audiences. I am not
just looking for migrations of existing sites. My partisan interests
here of course are for new licenses and development opportunities, but
I would provide the same services for VARs of any DBMS if we could
work out some way to do so without operating at a complete loss.

Of course there are all sorts of issues: Where are funds spent? Who
gets the referrals first? What is said about the member companies?
Is this a form of interference in the sales process? How are
"non-profit" efforts funded? Shouldn't this be done by a company that
isn't selling anything else? Do we really want a marketing
organization to oversee member companies as described above? As
always, this market has a tendency to not make any decisions "as a
community", rather than starting somewhere and then trying to improve
what we have. Like I said, I've been offering this for years and yet
here we are still talking about it like it's a new idea.

Would International Spectrum be a better venue for this? Maybe so. I
don't think Gus cares who buys what from whom as long as he's making
something in the middle with shows, educational seminars, advertising,
etc. For our purposes I don't see anything wrong with this - but let
there be no mistake, I don't believe he or anyone else will do this
out of the kindness of their heart - time is money and if you want to
make more money you'll need to pay someone for their time. If this
market wants someone less financially motivated, so be it. Like I
said, fix the problems but at least let's get ourselves into a
position where we're fixing the problems of a marketing group rather
than avoiding the concept entirely.

The offer is always open on my part to get it started. With enough
demand, I'll even start a forum on my web site just to discuss this
topic, regardless of whether we are asked do it or not. It just takes
a few companies to agree to give it a shot.

I wish you all a happy, safe, and prosperous new year.
Tony Gravagno
Nebula Research and Development
TG@ removethisNebula-RnD .com


"Simon Verona" wrote:

Tony Gravagno wrote:
I might not have read closely enough, but have you seen this?
http://www-306.ibm.com/software/data...ions/find.html

Also, IBM U2 might be better positioned to do more creative marketing
given upper management changes at IBM (above U2). I'm quite optimistic
(althought that might just be a personality trait ;-)

--dawn