In Firebird-general@yahoogroups.com,
"Ann W. Harrison" <aharrison@i...> wrote:

> > ... nobody could figure out a way
> > to make IB a big enough loser of money so
> > that it was perceived that it was riding the
> > right wave - in surf-dude speak?

> An Irish surf-dude?

Ireland is one of Europe's premier surf
spots - think of it, an island in the North
East Atlantic (with a South West prevailing
wind) - big rollers smashing up against the
West coast - though not a patch on California
or Hawaii though. We are *_way_* better for
wind and/or kite surfing however.

> Whoa... scary. But yeah,
> that's about where things were.

OK, so Interbase was a kind of
foster cousin within the Borland
"family"?

> > You're basically saying that Borland was trying
> > to run with the "dot-com, internet-thang", but
> > didn't know which ball to choose, so chose
> > IB because it might (while still profitable
> > going forward) not have been the brighest
> > star in their galaxy?


> Err, it was a little messier than that. The
> original idea was to "sunset" the product - stop
> development, cancel V6, and milk support contracts
> until everybody noticed that that the cow was dead.

That's what was meant by the other poster
talking about the "CA" approach?

Why do that to a product that's making money,
albeit not in the grotesque quantities that
seemed to be de rigeur in the late 90's?

What was the rationale behind "sunsetting" IB?

> That's when Paul Beach (then GM) and several other
> managers quit. Their departure got the attention
> of several InterBase partisans and the planned quiet
> execution turned into a noisy mess. The foray into
> the open source / dot com stock bubble was making
> lemonade out of the lemon they'd laid.

Ah... all becomes clear. The OS strategy was
a way of brushing the "CA strategy" under
the carpet and make the Inprise/Borland
execs look internet and dot-com boom
savvy in the process? Open Sourcing was
a vast ass-covering excersise?


Puzzlement still remains - why "sunset" it
at all?

> > I would have hardly considered IB as
> > a secondary asset.

> They did.

OK, which gets back to your (and my) point(s)
about Borland not considering IB as a primary
product.

> > Do you know (and are
> > you in a position to say?) what sort of
> > money was being spent and made by the
> > Interbase division of Borland/Inprise
> > at the time?

> Unh, no.

"Unh, no." - I dunno, or "Unh, no." - I can't
say? Are there any figures out there from
which one can glean any sort of idea about
annual sales and breakdowns of same?

This comes back to a point made in an
earlier thread about how to reliably
measure db penetration in a given
market.

> > ...trying to
> > explain why (despite its superior locking model)
> > [IB] never made it to the big time.

> The database market is pretty tough. Oracle
> has always maintained very good account control,
> and Microsoft is pretty good in that area too.
> Borland may very well have had some unpleasant
> discussions with them on the subject of pushing
> InterBase and the impact that would have on their
> access to early releases, free copies, and all
> the other tools you need to develop data access
> tools.

i.e. "you shut up about Interbase, and we'll give
you access to our db API's"? Query though - the
BDE was always ODBC driven and every db provided
one of those drivers. As for "free copies" - for an
organisation the size of Borland, surely the
purchase of an Oracle licence was hardly
a killer?


IB is the only (and still is AFAICS) the only
db which comes with its own set of components
in the IDE.

One idea that has constantly nagged me is why
they didn't do the same for the biggies like
Oracle, M$oft, Sybase and others - kind of a
plugin type of concept where you bung in db
components for your db of choice. I know that
Oracle have DOA, but the rest... the BDE was
nothing short of a disaster - whoever conceived
that bright idea should be taken out and shot!

> > I would love if you could let me know if there
> > are any howlers in there!


> I think I mentioned a bit of history - but largely,
> your account is fair. InterBase started in the same
> month as Sybase, but the Sybase people had done one
> startup before - we were complete novices. They got
> a lot of venture and had full-page three-color ads
> before they had working code.

Vapourware - the software equivalent of the
dance of the seven veils - titilates and gets
clients to hand over money, even though the
seasoned old pro down the block (who can only
leave cards in telephone boxes - betraying my
age a bit there) will give you more bang for
your buck (if you'll pardon the pun!).

> As it turns out, that
> was the winning strategy - somehow magazine seem to
> notice companies that buy advertising space and write
> glowing articles about those same products. No
> advertising budget -> no media coverage.

Here we could get into a disparaging rant
about journos, particularly those that
know nothing about IT - essentially
the detritovores of the IT industry - one
day they're on databases, the next it's
football, not that they could tell one
end of one (football or db) from the other.

I think that is an an unprofitable avenue.
We (you, IB/FB) have to deal with the world
as it is, not as some marvellous soft-focus
Barbarella entity we'd like it to be! (OK,
the Barbarella thing is mine!).

> Not that we didn't screw up in a lot of other ways...

AFAICS, big screwup (not that you could be
mind-readers at the time) was sale to a
company for whom the db was rather an
afterthought - i.e. Ashton-Tate, who then
resold to another company for which the
db was also not core, i.e. Borland.

Oracle always was and has been db-centric
(though now going app-centric, but till
2004 at least my logic holds, plus they
are trying to put the apps on Oracle itself).

Sybase - always a db company, though I will
never, for the life of me, understand why
they sold their db to Widoze.

IBM - so vast that even as a minor internal
player, their db was big.

Informix - db-centric.

(the above 4 are, for my money, the
most successful db companies around,
feel free to differ).

> > Basically, I say that
> > Borland were saying to clients something like
> > "TurboPascal/Delphi can work with any db, and,
> > oh, yeah, we have one that you might consider...".

> See above for a reason they might have taken that
> attitude.

Subject thrashed to death above.

> > As the Arch-Doyenne of IB/FB, I would be grateful
> > if you could contribute your opinion to the
> > debate between Paul Ruizendaal and myself over
> > what is a good/reasonable metric for the analysis
> > of db penetration in a given marketplace.

> Err, that's another topic on which I have absolutely
> no insight, except to say that there's less information
> available than you may think.

I thought the whole thrust of my point(s)
was/were that it is nothing short of
impossible to get meaningful info
out of company financial reports, *_even_*
for companies whose sole product is a
db offering.

> You can't find Oracle's
> database sales from their financials. Their pricing
> model is "everything you can possibly spend plus 20%",
> so the cost per copy depends on the depth of the
> pockets of the customer. Hey, I'm not complaining,
> that's the model we used too, though less skillfully.

Key point from this bit is that one cannot
know (or gain any clue about) number of
active installs from figures in SEC
accounts? Add in service agreements,
support (on-site, off-site) and you can
basically take numbers out of the air.

> As for using help wanted ads, well, Oracle is a very
> specialized skill. Anybody who can code and knows SQL
> can use Firebird effectively. Eats the hell out of the
> tutorial and certification market, but still, easy to
> use is a good thing (tm).

But, anyone who can code and knows SQL can
use Oracle effectively can/could...


My point is that *_GIVEN THE LACK OF OTHER
REASONABLE METRICS_*, the only *_SOLID_*
quantitative data (as opposed to biased
surveys, waffle from consultants with
(not-so) hidden agendas and claims from
proponents/advocates of the db itself, and
other assorted forms of hand-waving) is
job postings out there on boards.

A "typical" ad will mention all sorts of
stuff (good with people, good team player,
.... sun shines out of ass...), but many
(IMHO most) will also stick in a mention
of the db to be worked with. This is
IMHO (in the lack of anything better) the
only reasonable metric that we have to be
able to determine db penetration.


I'm not a bigot on this and am more than
willing to listen to anyone who has
(an)other idea(s) about how one should
measure db market penetration.

> My feeling from the business we're doing at IBPhoenix,
> the activity of the lists, and the mentions of Firebird
> in articles about open source is that we're growing fast.

I agree. From what I've been reading (and
on the whole I believe that FB list
contributors are telling the truth), FB
is establishing itself as a significant
player (Goldmine, German TNT, German
Press Agency, in particular SAS) are
all impressive clients for any firm/entity.


I really believe that there is real dynamism
and intellectual force behind the FB/Vulcan
dev effort and that it is being improved
by being subject to much scrutiny as is the
nature of open source projects.

> Nothing succeeds like success.

So, the $64.000 question. What are the
financials of IBPhoenix like? Do you have
to register them? If so, what were they for
last year? How many employees? Revenue?
Expenditure? Profit/Loss? Or just point
me to a web site where I can get this
info.

> Noticing and promoting
> our successes is also a good thing (tm).

I agree - but apart from a reasonably
impressive client list, what are the
successes? And failures?


Paul...

> Ann