IBM Helps Organizations Boost Business Performance With New Informix Database Software

- DHL, Rol Manufacturing, Oncor and M Systems International reduce costs, work more efficiently -

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Oct 13, 2010, 09:30 ET

ARMONK, N.Y., Oct. 13 /PRNewswire/ -- IBM (NYSE: IBM) today unveiled new Informix database software designed to help clients cut costs and respond quickly to market trends. The new version of IBM Informix software helps clients and partners speed the deployment of critical business solutions at lower cost while boosting performance by as much as 50%.

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Companies worldwide are recognizing the need to use information more effectively. A global IBM study of more than 2,500 Chief Information Officers showed that 83% of survey respondents identified analytics – the ability to see patterns in vast amounts of data and extract actionable insights – as the way they will enhance their organizations' competitiveness.

New performance capabilities in IBM's Informix software make it easier and faster to power business analytics along with transactional applications – boosting performance by as much as 50%. Higher performance means clients need fewer servers, and less space, power, and cooling resources. To handle the ever growing volume of data, the new software also includes innovative time series data management and data compression – minimizing storage space by as much as 66% compared to competitive solutions.

IBM is also introducing the new IBM Informix Flexible Grid that gives clients the flexibility to scale data management across regional or global clusters while mixing different hardware and operating systems. Previously, distributed clusters required maintaining consistent hardware and software levels. The new Informix capability reduces cost of operations for businesses.

The Informix Flexible Grid keeps data available to applications at all times, even during planned maintenance and upgrades, without the need for temporary hardware. This easy-to-deploy and manage innovation lowers operating costs by reducing the need for new hardware, and reducing administration time up to 80%.

"The new Flexible Grid capability lets us re-use old equipment and combine it with the use of new equipment to scale out across a grid that uses different types of hardware and operating systems. This is a real innovation that lowers our operating costs with less investment in hardware, and lets us leverage existing investments and resources," said Hector De Santiago Ramirez, IT Infrastructure Manager at DHL.

Client and Partner Momentum

Clients and partners are already benefitting from the new capabilities of the new Informix software across a wide range of industries including retail, manufacturing, and energy.

"The performance of IBM's new Informix database software is outstanding. Queries are running five times faster compared to the other database we were using," said Hal Maner, CTO at M Systems International Inc. "The enhanced self-optimization capabilities let us easily identify the source of any performance degradation without involving the applications or database teams. This reduces the time it takes to troubleshoot an issue by more than 60%. And since storage provisioning is automatic, we no longer have to manually provide extra space for users, which saves us an additional 5% in administration costs with each occurrence."

Because of low administration costs and a small footprint, Informix is also a cost effective platform for midmarket companies that require high availability and the ability to scale in a cost efficient way. Midmarket customers across industries, including healthcare, retail and manufacturing, can take advantage of instantaneous access to information with analytical capabilities to understand market and customer trends.

"Informix delivers an unbeatable value proposition for mid-market customers. It offers enterprise class data warehousing features and performance that match or exceed other leading data warehousing platforms, plus it delivers self-management and ease of use capabilities that are unparalleled. The combination of capability, performance and ease of use delivers the lowest possible true cost of ownership for mid-market customers," said Gary Quirke, Principal & CEO at QueBIT.

"Oncor is committed to improving energy efficiency by adopting the latest digital technologies providing Smart Metering solutions to our customers. Our major challenges are the significant storage space and performance required to manage the data collected by the smart meters. With Informix and its native support for time series data, we believe we will meet both of these challenges. Our initial testing has shown that with an Informix based solution we are able to reduce the storage requirements by two thirds and speed the query performance up to 60 times compared to the existing solution," said Donny Helm, Director Technology, Strategy, & Architecture at Oncor.

Gillani, an IBM Premier Partner for more than 14 years, is a leading provider of ERP solutions. Using Informix software, Gillani has been able to provide retail and manufacturing businesses with customized solutions that offer greater flexibility, management and system availability.

Rol Manufacturing is a major North American automotive parts manufacturer. The company needed to respond more dynamically to customer demands and optimize its business processes to stay ahead in a very competitive market. The company now uses an IBM and Gillani solution to deliver fast and accurate transaction processing, more responsive budgeting and forecasting and faster execution for real-time reporting. By integrating the financial and distribution systems from its four divisions, Rol has lowered inventory costs 6% overall and increased order fill rates by 21%.

"We've been able to improve operations across the board and we now get a consistent view of how our business is performing," said Ralph Callisto Vice President of IT at Rol Manufacturing. "The IBM and Gillani solution helps us deliver the right number of parts to the right location at the right time, which means we're able to fill orders right away and keep our operating costs low."

IBM now offers low-cost Informix editions for clients and for partners to integrate and sell with their solutions. In addition to a free developer edition of Informix, the new Innovator-C Edition is free to download and deploy – with a redistribution option available for partners. This enables use of Informix on-demand by removing the initial cost barrier while offering optional fee-based support when needed. All new editions run on Windows, Linux, Unix, and MAC OS operating systems. The new Informix Choice Edition for Windows and Mac OS X is a low-cost, feature-rich edition that offers enterprise-class functionality, high availability and a low price point suitable for the mid-market.

IBM Informix database software was voted #1 in customer satisfaction by VendorRate for 2008 and 2009. (http://public.dhe.ibm.com/software/data/sw-library/informix/vendorrate-report2009.pdf)

IBM Informix 11.7 is available immediately.