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HCL INFORMIX AUTOBAHN

1/3/2018

9 Comments

 
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                                                                                                            Updated: 8/30/18

After closing a busy year for HCL Informix, I was invited to attend an event at Bytec - a major HCL Informix distributor. This was a year end dinner at the beautiful Lindau in Bodensee, in Bayern, southwest of Germany. 

After the party, my friend, Richard Luft picked me up at the hotel in Lindau to kick off a busy day  of meetings in Friedrischafen, then Munich, then Stuttgart, and then back to Lindau. I was wondering if we would be able to cover the distance of 650km (400 miles), plus all the meetings, and lunch and coffee gatherings, and be back at the hotel as he promised in 12 hrs. He just smiled and answered “Autobahn”. 

So, here we go, legally speeding up 240km/h (150 miles per hour) and more. As long as you go on the left lane and there is not an explicit speed limit sign, you can go as fast as you want. Or better said, as fast as you and your car are able to go. What happens if a slower car passes an even slower car right in front of you? Well, you brake and reduce your speed very very quickly, then accelerate and go fast again. I mean really braking fast and accelerating even faster. And the German drivers like Richard seem to enjoy this… a lot. 

Now, are they unsafe? Did I feel unsafe? Do they have more accidents? The answer is, No.
And that’s when you really get the marvel of the famous “German cars' engineering”, known for its high tech performance and innovation. It is not only about the sturdiness and aesthetics, it is all about safety and all of the technology features that allow them to drive like that. Sensors, actuators, and computers all through the car, that keep ingesting massive amount of information and reacting immediately based on the conditions. For example, pre-sense technology detects nearby cars that are in close proximity, reducing your speed before you hit the brake, maintaining legal distance with the car in front of you or sensing that the cold rain is changing the friction between the tires and the road, and therefore limiting the output of your engine. A real engineering, continuous innovation to drive safe, efficiently, very fast, while enjoying the experience.
 
That kept me thinking on the innovation dilemma: If they had limited the speeds and enforced it heavily, would they had achieved such a level of technological sophistication and superiority? So when we want to innovate, who should dictate the terms? The drivers of the left lane or the right lane? Nothing wrong with driving on the right, actually big payloads go very efficiently that way, but the true breakthrough will come from the ones who dare and enjoy driving on the left lane. We can translate this into everything in engineering and many other aspects of life, but we can definitely make a direct correlation to our own world of Information Technology and Analytics.
 
During my extended  trip to Barcelona, Paris, and Zurich, I had the luck to meet the guys that drive on the left lane with HCL Informix. Those that are still betting the future of their companies and personal life on HCL Informix. 
 
The major B2B of Construction and Home Improvement of Germany runs on HCL Informix, meaning that every craftsman will send a quote to a client using a very robust and modern tool built all around HCL Informix, fast, very fast. Number of DB administrators? Zero.

Do they use a “major ERP” tool? No. They use a "local neighborhood” one, and it seems that they are pretty much satisfied on never get canned on one of them. They keep beating the biggest on-line retail in the world. On HCL Informix. Tremendous job made by Schramlsof Sofwarehaus.
 
The major Pharma distributor in Spain runs their entire business in HCL Informix, including even tracking the trucks online and informing the deliveries of individual package of pills to the pharmacists. And if there is city traffic, the pharmacy receives a message with a new ETA. Amazing operation, from reception, to automated storage, pictures individually taken by product, delivery, sales, customer management, accounting, end-to-end, everything built around HCL Informix, leveraging of course its uniqueness of hybrid content, time-series and geospatial capacities. On HCL Informix. A superlative work made by Deister Software in Barcelona.
 
I was able to meet happy customers during this trip. There were plenty of good ideas that will help to continue improving our technology. I enjoyed the hospitality but what I enjoyed most was knowing that there are truly entrepreneurial innovators that keep running on the left lane and are committed to HCL Informix. They made me feel the speed of their own Autobahns and the need for continuous innovation from us and how vital they are to our process. And actually, these neighborhood ERPs and development platforms could and should be used in other places too, expanding our community. Imagine that HCL Informix Marketplace.


Having been an entrepreneur myself in the past, I can relate to the need for innovation, and we’ll make sure that we improve our innovation process prioritizing those who were betting and/or will bet their future with us. Please make sure that your voice is heard, don’t be silent, keep or start communicating. We welcome optimistic innovators. We will go to you and start a conversation, if needed. 
 
So, on what side of the Autobahn do you want HCL Informix to be? I say on the left side. Do you?
Have a wonderful 2018. And buckle up. We will ride on the left side of the Autobahn. 

Cheers.
Marcelo

PS: Thank you Christian, Richard, Xavi, Vicente, Salvador, Eric, Mehdi, Arno, Dominik, Alexandra and others for your warm hospitality.
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Marcelo Cabane
Sales Director at HCL
Connect with me on LinkedIn

Informix is a trademark of IBM Corporation in at least one jurisdiction and is used under license.
9 Comments
Xavier link
1/3/2018 02:44:24 pm

Good job!

We still need to share lot of knowledge about informix customer experiences.

Reply
Marcelo Cabane link
1/3/2018 03:20:07 pm

Indeed! And there are many already going on and many more to come. That's how truly innovation will be made!.

Reply
Javier Weinmeister
1/3/2018 04:12:24 pm

Just a short question. What's they roadmap when it comes to different versions and their límits?. I'm asking specifically about cores and memory. 16 cores and 16gb has been the limit for about 10 years.

Thank you

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Marcelo Cabane link
1/3/2018 04:20:53 pm

Thanks for asking Javier. While not fully announced, what I can tell you is that our product roadmap won't include the so called "editions" with caps. It will be self-sized by VCPUs/Mem. Stay tuned.
Cheers. Marcelo

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Nandkishor
1/4/2018 01:46:52 am

Thanks Marcelo,
I am excited to see new era for informix

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Marcelo Cabane link
1/4/2018 03:17:38 am

Thank you, Nandkishor. We are very much excited too, devoting resources and betting on ourselves on this new venture!
Feel free to share your experience!
Cheers

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RUBEN DARIO CARAMUTTI link
1/12/2018 09:46:49 am

Gracias. Ofcourse that Ifx must be in the left side.
Sql + NoSql, JSON, REST & Mongo y genial la visión full-size edition. Pero ademas es necesario pensar un entorno de shell scrip que sea nativo Python, un API BlockChain y en general un API de API's.

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Marcelo Cabane link
1/14/2018 07:45:11 pm

Thank you Rubén for your encouraging comments. Yes, we do agree on the fully native Python and that’s planned and undergoing as we speak. I will update more about the blockchain API. Good idea about the API of APIs. Hope you keep contributing and be an early adopter of the AWS release. Thanks!

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Frank
2/1/2018 06:34:38 am

Hi Marcelo,

I'm super excited about the Informix future! I think we have the right folks in place at all levels to make it the front runner in many areas, if not all of the industry!

We briefly talked back in June and then more in the airport in Sept. when we were waiting on our flight in Kansas, about End-Of-Life cycle and getting us out of the business of legacy systems that were on 20 year old hardware and software. Hopefully this is a reality soon that will help me better serve the lab needs to address the new products and features of tomorrow?

Also hope that we soon develop a strategy around our ARM IoT devices and OS versions, etc? Until this is accomplished I feel strongly that we are simply playing in the space and not really serious about what we will do to better position our lab for the IoT future.

Just a few concerns of mine as we still need to involve our lab team in the future of Informix. In the past it was always an after thought to bring in the IT team that ran the lab daily and saw the struggles and challenges as well as the mistakes made without our input in the beginning.

You said that would be a priority back in September as we had to evolve past this mistakes.

I know you will push the teams to make sure these ideas and processes from the past are not the path we want for the future and that is equally as exciting!

Thanks for being out there for all of US, from all of Informix!

Frank

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