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The chief of IBMs database division will announce on Tuesday new product bundles and consulting services around its Informix Dynamic Server.
The announcement, which will take place at the companys Informix Users Conference in Las Vegas, will go a long way in reinforcing IBMs commitment to maintaining the Informix Server which IBM acquired with its purchase of Informix Corp. in July, IBM officials said.
Users of IDS have expressed concern that the database would be eliminated, and that theyd be forced to switch to IBMs DB2.
But Janet Perna, IBMs general manager of data management, and her team have repeatedly denied this. The new services being announced are more proof of the Armonk, N.Y., companys dedication to IDS, said Jeff Jones, director of strategy for IBMs data management solutions group, in San Jose, Calif.
IBM will announce the next version of DB2 in June or July of next year, Jones added. The version number has not yet been decided, but the it will incorporate many of IDSs core technology, such as indexing schemes, parallelization techniques, DEC Alpha support, and database self-management, he said.
Until then, Jones said, the bundles, which will ship Nov. 30, will help users of both databases deal with hybrid environments.
The bundles are threefold, he said. One, the Data Management Gold Program, will sell database licenses in any combination of IDS and DB2, for about $38,000 per processor. It will also have a version with business intelligence and clustering tools, for about $50,000 per server.
Another bundle, called Data Management Gold Maintenance, will provide upgrade and support services; its pricing isnt yet announced.
The third, Data Management Gold Integration and Transition Services, is a consulting service. “This is, lets come in and look at where you are now and where you want to be, and help you understand …what the proper mix should be,” Jones said.
“This is another announcement in the stream,” Jones said. “It means help them be happy with what they choose to go with, whether that means Informix or DB2. This announcement illustrates that.”
In her keynote at the user conference Tuesday, Perna is expected to also announce that Informixs top customer service executive has been put in charge of all IBM database customer service, Jones added. .