Informix, HP offer ready-to-go warehouse
Through the companies' new program, Informix and HP will preload and pretest Informix's data warehouse software on HP's hardware.
Most of the enterprise application vendors like SAP, PeopleSoft, and Oracle are partnering with hardware and services companies like HP to preload and preconfigure the business software systems on servers for quick implementation at customer sites.
Informix announced this morning a similar deal with HP. For the program, Informix and HP will preload and pretest Informix's data warehouse software on HP's hardware.
The companies estimate the program can save at least 100 hours of implementation time and the time to build the data warehouse.
"By completing certification and integration up front, customers can focus more on the business issues they are trying to solve with a data warehouse," said Patrick Rogers, marketing manager for HP's high performance systems division. "By working with Informix, we shorten implementation time and increase the return on investment from customers' data warehouses."
Informix has been on a slow but steady road to recovery the past few quarters after watching its market share slide as Oracle, and to a lesser extent Microsoft and IBM, took control of the market.
Since its slide, Informix has focused more attention on data warehousing and the data mart business instead of solely on enterprise warehouses to boost its revenue. Informix bought Red Brick Software, a data warehousing vendor, and restructured its business to focus on new markets.
Informix is also turning to partnerships like the one with HP and one announced earlier this week with Siemens to gain market. For companies like Informix and the struggling Sybase, getting products to market fast is critical to compete with Oracle, Microsoft, and IBM.
In fact, Informix also announced today a partnership with middleware vendor BEA Systems to add Java middleware to its database infrastructure mix. Informix is to test and certify integration of its Dynamic server with BEA's WebLogic application server to give users the ability to deploy Java at either the client, middle tier, or server levels of their computing architecture.