[Info-ingres] So we advertised for a new DBA...?

[Adrian Williamson]

>so the picture you paint is rather misleading.

The picture I paint is from my own personal experience. In the UK market
sector I’ve not heard about any new Ingres sales.

If you have been making new Ingres sales into new customers - what package
of support does Actian give them to get them off the ground?

Is there a new customer package? - Where they get a set amount of
consultancy time, shown how to install it - how to get started etc - make
them feel valued?

I’m delighted that X100 is in a market dominating position at the moment –
but if you can’t buy the skills to exploit this - at the moment- then that
is going to affect any competition which Ingres is involved in.

> it’s far easier to generate an OpenROAD application than it is to build
the equivalent using Java

Twenty years ago I fully endorsed that position, today I’m not so sure. IDEs
have come on leaps and bounds in the last twenty years – modern IDE will
write a lot of the software for you making suggestions etc. If you do not
have a particular functional capability they will go find a framework for
you. If you can’t find one then there will be someone else who has hit that
issue and the answer will only be a google search away.

I built an Andriod Phone application in an hour the other day from scratch
(no licences required) – all it did was let you click a button until a
progress bar reached 100%. I put it on a number of Phones the same day.

I’m not so sure that a Java veteran of 26 years could build an image for a
windows distribution faced with a fresh install of OpenROAD in an hour.

But I digress - we still haven't found Marty a DBA.....


From: Alex Hanshaw <Alex.Hanshaw at actian.com> 
Sent: 25 April 2018 14:52
To: Adrian Williamson <adrian.williamson at rationalcommerce.com>; 'Martin
Bowes' <martin.bowes at ndph.ox.ac.uk>; info-ingres at lists.planetingres.org
Subject: RE: [Info-ingres] So we advertised for a new DBA...?

Actian is actively going after new business for all of its product portfolio
including Ingres. Romy’s team have had some recent successes gaining new
Ingres business
so the picture you paint is rather misleading.
The HCL announcement will create a lot more new business opportunities for
all of the Actian portfolio. New business will drive demand for DBAs and
demand
will attract people.
It may be harder to find an Ingres DBA than an Oracle DBA but you’ll be
paying for it in a number of ways if you go the Oracle root. If you want to
make it easier to find
an Ingres DBA you need to promote the benefits of Ingres, Actian X and/or
Vector. We have plenty of large scale deployments, x100 is the fastest
analytics engine on the planet
and it’s far easier to generate an OpenROAD application than it is to build
the equivalent using Java.

Alex


From: mailto:info-ingres-bounces at lists.planetingres.org
<mailto:info-ingres-bounces at lists.planetingres.org> On Behalf Of Adrian
Williamson
Sent: 25 April 2018 14:09
To: 'Martin Bowes' <mailto:martin.bowes at ndph.ox.ac.uk>;
mailto:info-ingres at lists.planetingres.org
Subject: Re: [Info-ingres] So we advertised for a new DBA...?

Hi,

We can offer you a DBA service for less money than that, and we are
interested in genetics


Sorry couldn’t resist.

I suspect most Ingres DBA are comfortable where they are and seeing as
Actian doesn’t seem to be:

• Selling the product into any green field developments 
• Selling to big software houses to  use the product for their customers or
their products
• Giving it away free to Educational Institutions *

I conclude that Ingres DBAs are not being made any more.

I was asked recently would I advocate using OpenROAD/Ingres in a large scale
online development i.e. requiring lots of resource – and I had to say no.

The market is awash with Java / C# / SQL Server / Oracle monkeys, which
makes them easy to find and cheap to hire. (if you have the kind of
development process control that can sort out the wheat from the chaff
before you blow your budget on substandard nine-to-fivers)

It needs an aggressive marking campaign coupled with a product strategy
designed to generate long term licence growth.

Cheers

Adrian

* I started on Window4GL and Ingres because Paisley University as it was
known had it on a Beta release. It was lab technician who pointed it out too
– not part of the syllabus – I got the course rules relaxed to allow its
inclusion.

From: mailto:info-ingres-bounces at lists.planetingres.org
<mailto:info-ingres-bounces at lists.planetingres.org> On Behalf Of Martin
Bowes
Sent: 25 April 2018 13:19
To: mailto:info-ingres at lists.planetingres.org
Subject: [Info-ingres] So we advertised for a new DBA...?

Hi All,

I’m curious.

We (aka Oxford University) advertised for a new DBA. The position was
offered with a salary of up to £47,722pa, full time, 3 years fixed in the
first instance. The advert did mention we are mainly Ingres on Linux but
with other engines (Postgres, SQL Server) and platforms.

Not one person with Ingres DBA experience applied.

Why? Seriously, I was disappointed.

Does anyone have any thoughts they’d like to share on that?

Martin Bowes