Informix User Group Meeting is coming to South America in August and September 2013 / Informix User Group Meeting está llegando a América del Sur en agosto y septiembre 2013

Invitation in English &Spanish 

We are excited to inform our South American Informix Users about the upcoming series of Informix user group events, which is being planned in the following countries : Bolivia, Argentina, Chile, Ecuador and Venezuela from the 12th of August to the 5th of September. These are half-a-day events, packed with sessions which will be conducted by IBM experts to give you great overview of everything you need to know about Informix, especially around the new features of Informix 12.1.

Join us for these events from August 12 – September 5 to better understand Informix, which is widely regarded as the leading-edge technology in the market, and also to see what IBM can do to help you better realize your business goals, with Informix.

Why should you attend?

•  Get an up-close look at the capabilities that set Informix apart
• Get to know more about what makes IBM Informix 12.1 : Simply Powerful
•  Learn about the new opportunities and applications in the Mobile space with Informix 12.1
•  Speak with IBM executives and Informix product experts.
•  Network with other forward-thinking IT leaders, The

Agenda for the User group meeting:

• IBM Informix Roadmap
• IBM Informix 12.1 : Simply Powerful
• Mobile devices and Informix 12.1 : New Opportunities and Applications
• Informix Warehouse Accelerator : Enhancing Performance for Operational Analytics
• Migration to Informix (from Oracle to Informix, Migration from 4GL to Genero) – Demo
• All you need to know about Informix License and Renewals

Date and Location: 

• Date : 08/12/2013            La Paz, Bolivia
• Date : 08/20/2013            Santiago, Chile
• Date : 08/22/2013            Buenos Aires, Argentina
• Date : 09/04/2013            Quito, Ecuador
• Date : 09/05/2013            Caracas,  Venezuela

For more on these events and to register, please write to louis.cherian@in.ibm.com

Looking forward to meeting you during these events.

Invitation In Spanish :

Informix User Group Meeting está llegando a América del Sur en agosto 2013
Estamos muy contentos de informar a nuestros usuarios de Informix de Sudamérica acerca de la próxima serie de eventos de grupos de usuarios de Informix, que se está planificando en los siguientes países: Bolivia, Argentina, Chile, Ecuador y Venezuela desde el 12 de agosto al 5 de septiembre. Estos son eventos  de medio día, con sesiones dictadas por expertos de IBM que le brindarán una amplia visión de todo lo que necesita saber acerca de Informix, especialmente en torno a las nuevas capacidades de Informix 12.1.
Únase a nosotros para estos eventos del 12 de agosto al 5 de septiembre para entender mejor Informix, que es ampliamente considerada como la tecnología de vanguardia en el mercado, y también para ver lo que IBM puede hacer para ayudarle a realizar mejor sus objetivos de negocio, con Informix.

Por qué debería asistir?

•  Entienda acerca a las capacidades que ofrece Informix
•  Conozca más acerca de lo que hace IBM Informix 12.1: Simplemente Potente
•  Aprenda acerca de las nuevas oportunidades y aplicaciones móviles con Informix 12.1
•  Hable con ejecutivos de IBM y expertos en productos Informix.
•  Red con otra visión de futuro, los líderes de TI

Agenda de la reunión del grupo del usuario:

• IBM Informix Roadmap
• IBM Informix 12.1: Simplemente Potente
• Dispositivos móviles e Informix 12.1: nuevas oportunidades y aplicaciones
• Informix Almacén acelerador: Mejorar el rendimiento de análisis de operaciones
• La migración a Informix (de Oracle para Informix, migración de Genero 4GL a) – Demo
• Todo lo que necesitas saber sobre Informix licencia y Renovaciones

Fecha y lugar:

• Fecha: 08/12/2013 La Paz, Bolivia
• Fecha: 08/20/2013 Santiago, Chile
• Fecha: 08/22/2013 Buenos Aires, Argentina
• Fecha: 09/04/2013 Quito, Ecuador
• Fecha: 09/05/2013 Caracas, Venezuela

Para más información sobre estos eventos y para registrarse, por favor escriba louis.cherian@in.ibm.com
Esperamos contar con su presencia durante estos eventos.

Regards/Saludos,
Louis

IBM Informix Business Partner Montage

IBM Informix Business Partner Montage : A new video was developed recently, where we tried to find out why our business partners rely on IBM Informix, for their business. The outcome of the video was really promising, as our Business Partners summarized the benefits of IBM Informix, just in the way we are all familiar with it:

• “Low cost of owner ship”
• “Extremely reliable”
• “Flexible”
• “Scalable”
• “Reliable”
• “It just keeps running, without the need of any maintenance”
• “Set it and forget about it”
• “High availability”
• “It is designed to work, and it works just the way it is designed to do”

And at the end of the video, it is great to hear from our business partner, perhaps a very unique and distinguishing fact, that only an Informix user would have the luxury of saying, “I am not just an Informix user, I am an Informix fan!”

A special thanks to all our Business Partners who were a part of this video, for making it a very special and successful one for Informix.

You can watch the complete video here or clink on the link : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWgUtnwiFbM&feature=plcp

Until next time,

Louis

Coming soon : Informix Infobahn roadshow 2012 in Germany, Austria and Switzerland!

Informix is coming to Germany, Austria and Switzerland from September 26 through October 2nd and you don’t want to miss this opportunity to attend to the latest Informix sessions, and also meet with IBM executives and thought leaders.

Take a look at the schedule of events : 

Germany:

• September 26th : Berlin
• September 27th : Dusseldorf
• September 28th : Munich

Switzerland:

• October 1st : Zurich

Austria:

• October 2nd : Vienna

The list of international speakers for the Informix Infobahn roadshow 2012 include :

• Jerry Keesee (Director, IBM Informix Database Development)
• Frederick Ho ( IBM Chief Technologist Informix)
• Steve Shoaf (IBM WW Sales Executive Informix & SolidDB)
• Stuart Litel (President International Informix Users Group)

You will also get a chance to meet with the local Informix experts like Michael Koester, Dr. Andreas Weininger and Alexander Koerner.

For additional details, the Infobahn agenda and the registration links for Germany here: http://www.ibm.com/de/events/informix

For Austria and Switzerland please send an email to gerhard.fuersatz@at.ibm.com

We hope to meet with you during these events.

Until next time,
Louis

Discover Informix in Singapore on the 6th of September 2012 (Thursday)

It was a great opportunity for us to meet in person with 100’s of Informix users in Malaysia and Thailand through the series of Discover Informix events we are conducting in the ASEAN region. I would like to personally thank all Informix users who made it to the event – Thank you so much for your support and dedication. The results of these events have been very positive and motivating, and going forward we certainly look forward to meeting with you more often!

After successfully conducting Discover Informix events in Malaysia and Thailand in August, we are now all set to visit Singapore on the 6th of September 2012 (Thursday). The event is scheduled to start from 9:00 AM to 12:30 PM at the Marina Bay Sands Convention center, 10 Bayfront Avenue, Singapore 018956.

If you are in (or around) Singapore during the 6th of September, please try and make it to this event. The half a day event, is filled with exciting sessions, taking you through IBM’s commitment to Informix, Informix Warehouse Accelerator (IWA), Genero, Use case scenario, and How we could make a better Informix community through social media etc.,

Register for the event today : You could register for the event by calling up Irene at +65 6743 1277 or Email her at  ibm_informix@projectvaults.com.sg

Looking forward to meeting with you in Singapore, do not forget to register for the event please.

Until next time,

Louis

Discover Informix in Thailand on August 7th (Tuesday), 2012: A user group event

Discover Informix is coming to Thailand on August 7^th (Tuesday), from 8:30 AM to 1:00 PM at Intercontinental hotel (Venue: Pinnacle 2,3), Bangkok.

If you are around Bangkok during the week of 7^th (of August 2012), please join us to for this half a day event and be a part of the largest Informix users gathering Thailand. We will be having some of the members IBM Informix leadership team and Informix subject matter experts to be present for this event in person, and they will be most happy to spend time with you to discuss on how IBM could help better achieve your business goals with Informix.

The half a day event is filled with exciting session spanning from sessions focusing on IBM’s commitment to Informix, to session talking about Genero & Informix warehouse and Informix in the social media.

And to add some fun, we also have lucky draw at the end of the event 🙂

Please register for this event by faxing the attached form to 0-2273-0188, e-mailing ibmmkt@th.ibm.com or by calling up 0-2273-4777 for more information.

The registration form is appended below.

Looking forward to meeting you in person during ‘Discover Informix in Thailand’.

Until next time,

Louis

Discover Informix in Malaysia on August 2nd,2012 : A user group Event

Good news for our Malaysian Informix users: Discover Informix – Informix user group event is coming to Malaysia on August 2nd 2012.

Be sure to be a part of the largest gathering of Informix users in Malaysia on August 2nd (Thursday) from 1: 30 PM to 7: 30 PM at Ballroom A, Level 10, DoubleTree Hotel, Kuala Lumpur, followed by Buka Puasa dinner that will commence from 7:30 PM onwards.

You can get an up-close look at the capabilities that set Informix apart by being a part of this event and get exclusive coverage on new content and value propositions of Informix, straight from the IBM Informix leadership team who will be present at the event.

To register or for more information on the Discover Informix – Informix user group event in Malaysia on August 2nd 2012 please call Irene at  +603 7805 1700 or email ibm_informix@siriuscom.my

Register today and be sure to be a part of this event!

Here’s the agenda for the event:

Until next time,

Louis

IBM Informix Road Map for 2012 : An interview with Jerry Kessee

I had the opportunity to interview Jerry Kessee (World Wide Director, Informix Software) during the Informix India Annual User Group Meet 2012 which took place on the 16^th of February 2012 in Mumbai.

While speaking with him, I got a chance to ask him about the road map of Informix in 2012. In his response, he spent a few minutes speaking about the milestones achieved by Informix, especially last year.

To summarize, there were a lot a lot of ground breaking technologies that were introduced last year, some of the highlights include

• The introduction of Informix 11.7 which revolved around the technology of flexible grid focused on ‘clustering’, which allowed a company to better leverage heterogeneous hardware in a cluster and to leverage on share disk technology. Companies could use it for scale out, workload balancing etc., which eventually helps in achieving 24/7 availability. With these features, we were able to drive a key message to our customers, which is ‘Maintenance and upgrade without any downtime’ – which is extremely valuable to our customers.
• Then came the introduction of the ultimate warehouse edition which is an in memory columnar based warehouse that uses extreme compression – we would like to talk about analytics at the speed of thought and our customers have benchmarked that technology at 500 to 700 fast performance improvement
• Genero has been OEM’ed from 4J’s. This technology allows our customers to modernize and develop new applications not restricted to web space more importantly in the mobile space.

And this year’s focus is primarily around the following:

• Warehouse technology
• Modernization
• Leveraging Informix’s unique capabilities around TimeSeries and Spatial data to focus particularly around the smarter planet initiative and,
• Enhancing the overall OLTP capabilities

Jerry reinforced the focus of Informix in the coming years, and touched upon how critical Informix is also to the smarter planet initiative. The road map for Informix looks very promising and allows our customers and prospects to choose a lot of great technologies.

You can watch the complete interview on YouTube, by clicking here.

You can also stay on top of Informix by ‘Liking’ us on facebook and joining official IBM Informix Group on LinkedIn.

Until next time,

Louis

IBM Informix goes to the University; Learned by over 4K students and still counting

Meet Dr. Mirta Baranovic, Head of Applied Computing Department, School of Electrical Engineering and Computing at the University of Zagreb in Croatia.

What is the connection between Dr. Mirta Baranovic and Informix?

Dr. Mirta Baranovic started developing a passion for Informix in the early eighties, bringing Informix to the University of Zagreb and using it as the basis of her database courses. In fact, more than 4,000 database students have taken her classes over the years.

When asked “why Informix?” her reply is simple – “love at first sight”. She gives a lot of credit to the architecture of Informix which is in her words ‘brilliant and modern’. From an academic’s point of view, there is another compelling reason for liking Informix, the fact that the concepts in Informix are clear and simple, and a student can easily grab those concepts. And thanks to the way Informix is built, it requires little or no effort to run.

In addition to these reasons, a key strategic relationship with an Informix business partner in the region further strengthened this relationship. It is a fact that, although students had the option of using the other products, Informix has been and continues to be a popular choice.

It’s indeed a pleasure to know how Informix is playing an important role in shaping up the career of thousands of students across Croatia.

The unmatchable features of Informix that came up in my conversation with Dr. Mirta Baranovic, include:

• Reliability
• Quality of architecture
• Clarity of concepts

All these qualities add up to make Informix a preferable choice for Dr. Mirta Baranovic.

This is a rare testimony for Informix, where Informix is making a difference in teaching many generations of students, the fundamental database concepts. I am not sure how many other products can make such claims.

I sincerely thank Dr. Mirta Baranovic for giving me the opportunity to learn about her work, and Stuart Litel for introducing me to Dr. Mirta.

If you would like to know more about Dr. Mirta Baranovic and the work she does, you can write to her at mirta.baranovic@fer.hr

To know more about the IBM Informix product family visit http://www-01.ibm.com/software/data/informix/

If you would like to stay on top of all the latest on Informix, like us on facebook http://on.fb.me/IBMInformix

Until next time,

Louis

Photograph of Dr. Mirta Baranovic

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Smarter Planet now has a smarter energy solution

With the ever Increasing ‘demand’ and shortage of’ Supply’, the key is not just in being efficient, but ‘Smart’. And this couldn’t be more apt for the utility companies which are traditionally found to be struggling with a variety of issues: Be it in transforming the grid, Improving generation and performance, Complying with government regulations, optimizing resource consumption or producing clean energy. However, there is one critical device that has the capability to make a positive impact across the value chain of the utility company – it’s Smart Meter.

And an efficient Smart Meter solution can turn around a utility company’s traditional ways of collecting and using data. It has the capability to collect data in an interval of as low as 5 minutes for smarter data management resulting in:

• Better communication between the meter and the enterprise systems:
• Load forecasting
• Outage management
• Optimize energy purchases
• Resolve service issues
• Improve power reliability
• Help customers reduce consumption and cut costs

Millions of smart meters and billions of readings; what are the challenges?

• Reduction in load time

The time series data generated by millions of smart meters have to be loaded just as quickly it is produced. Hence it is imperative for the utility companies to have a data management solution that will reduce the load time considerably.

• Storing the data 

The billions of readings collected have to be stored and queried efficiently. The stored data could be used for analysis or to comply with government regulations which requires utility companies to provide access to historical data, analyze data for improving efficiency or reducing energy use.

• Inefficient IT hardware planning

With the exponential rise in data, companies may tend to add additional IT hardware infrastructure to meet the requirements. This will have a direct impact on the overall IT budget in a big way, and will amplify the risks associated by creating inefficiency without having sufficient data protection strategies.

• Having an inappropriate data management solution

Today’s solutions use data management techniques to handle time series data, and this will not be a viable option for tomorrow. The velocity of data produced by the millions smart meters will only rise exorbitantly and it will be sensible to have a solution that has the native capability to handle Time series, not just for today but for years to come.

Why should Utility companies look at IBM Informix?

IBM Informix TimeSeries software is a robust and scalable relational data base management solution which has the proven native capability to handle the challenges of specialized time series data. It basically consists of a high speed loader designed especially for the enormous demands of time series data, rapidly loading data as it is produced. Coupled with this feature, Informix also has the innovative storage approach, whereby the storage requirements are significantly reduced.

Let me take a moment here to guide you to some useful links which will complete my take on this topic :

• A recent IBM paper, Build Smart Metering Solutions with IBM Informix TimeSeries, explores how smart meters change how utility companies capture data, which creates new possibilities for the use of that data http://bit.ly/ISMDMW

• Here is the latest IBM Informix Benchmark study, which demonstrates Informix’s Unprecedented Performance & Scalability for Meter Data Management. Read the results showing Ten Million Meters Scalable to One Hundred Million Meters for Five Billion Daily Meter Readings http://ibm.co/oEGWA6

• Here’s is the link to the latest video on IBM Informix titled: Smart Meters need Smart data management http://youtu.be/q0sqYyG7Jqk

I hope that you will find these links useful.

If you would like to stay on top of all the latest on Informix and how Informix helps in building a smarter planet, like us on facebook http://on.fb.me/IBMInformix and show us your support.

Until next time,

Louis

The next decade of Informix at IBM has already begun!

IBM Informix celebrated a decade at IBM on the 1st of July, 2011. The journey so far has been an adventurous one for everyone associated with IBM Informix.

So what has changed during these past 10 years?

The answer is, A LOT! Here are some of the highlights:

• IBM Informix has had more than 10 major product announcements in the past ten years
• Introduced more than 500 cutting edge features into the product
• And in the past year alone, our partners were able to deliver over 50 new Informix-based solutions into the market

And what has NOT changed in the past 10 years?

The core of Informix:

• The ability to consistently churn out innovative and efficient offerings, allowing customers to do more while spending less
• The performance, reliability, and ease of administration you have become accustomed to
• The ability to build lasting relationship with partners and customers in every engagement

What’s in store for the next decade?

The next decade of Informix at IBM has already begun, and Informix 11.7 is at the heart of this journey, which is powering online transaction processing and decision support applications for organizations of all sizes, helping them deliver Smarter solutions.

Applications for a Smarter Planet will have tremendous relevance in the coming decade and IBM Informix’s role in the making of a smarter planet is very crucial, thanks to Informix’s capability of handling a variety of special data types such as spatial, geodedic and timeseries data which are key to enabling a smarter application. These data types enable smarter applications like Smarter Traffic systems, land management systems, and energy solutions. In fact Informix is shown to be superior to other data management solutions in handing timeseries data in terms of performance and storage savings.

Keeping in mind the next decade for Informix, I am delighted to direct you to a video titled “The Next decade of IBM Informix has begun” http://bit.ly/Informixnext10

The video basically summarizes Informix’s capabilities and readiness for the next decade in creating a Smarter Planet. If you Like this Video, and would like to stay on top of all the latest on Informix, like us on facebook http://on.fb.me/IBMInformix and show your support.

I really hope that you enjoy the video.

Until Next time,
Louis