When people have not heard of IBM U2, below is what I send them as a quick overview, like an Elevator Pitch. This has taken months to craft using extensive feedback and has very specific wording & presentation. It is very short and extremely powerful.
Please note that I never use the words "PICK" nor "Multi-Value". Those words are only important to our community and others don't have a clue about what we are talking about. My blood is very Blue and therefore the exclusive U2 wording. My request to you is to use this post to bolster the IBM U2 community (and NOT the "Multi-Value" community as a whole) by providing something with substance, for use when confronted with other "Multi-Value" or First Normal Form products. IBM U2's true market is completely outside of "Multi-Value". Statistics (Facts) stated here-within were specifically used to terminate the proposed SAP and DB2 implementation for SCM. Yes, you read that right. Watch for the upcoming "SCM .5" announcement in a future post. As soon as someone mentions that U2 is a "PICK" database, I immediately distance the U2 data servers (for everyone labels "PICK" as old, which it is & runs in RAW data format), and explain that the U2 data servers are completely new and use standard "C" language calls to the Operating System. This is an extremely important differentiator especially in relationship to 1) Security Requirements for Sarbanes Oxley and 2) the implementation of High Availability solutions. Then I move into highlighting the numerous extensions to the data servers that IBM U2 Engineering has accomplished (XML, Data Encryption at Rest, native interfaces for Java & .Net, multilingual, etc.) Please forgive me if this formats to something weird since HTML is the source. Each topic heading is bolded and every line underneath is a bullet. The Website address listed is blue, underlined, and a hot link to the site. If you wish to have a softcopy, please send me an e-mail. Request Please (and from the Moderator too): "Please watch over quoting. Please trim the quotes to a minimum. It is very hard on slow connections, digest users, archives like Indexfocus, and on everyone's disk space." Respectfully Submitted, Steve Stephen M. O'Neal U2 Lab Services Sales Specialist Information Management, IBM Software Group ===== IBM U2 Fast Facts: The U2 name comes from the two data servers ? UniData & UniVerse. IBM acquired U2 via the Informix acquisition in 2001. U2 was 45,000 of the 65,000 sites mentioned in the acquisition announcement. Since the acquisition, U2 has experienced annual, double digit growth, year on year. IBM U2 is installed at ~ 60,000 sites World Wide, with ~5 million end users on a daily basis. 600 Channel Partners have written applications using U2 for ERP or Departmental Solutions U2 has the highest percentage of maintenance paying customers of any SWG product (91%). We have very happy IBM U2 customers and a strong revenue base. IBM U2 is most commonly used for: A complete ERP solution, company wide, for SMB customers, or A departmental solution in large companies. The IBM U2 product line is known for: Incredibly fast OLTP systems that scale to over 15,200 concurrent users on a single system. A data structure like no other, with variable length fields and files, allowing for tables within tables, resulting in extremely condensed, efficient data. Comparison: 40% to 60% of traditional data servers are Spaces and Zeros. Native interfaces for Java, .NET, MQ/Series, XML, etc. and extensive capabilities such as Data Encryption, Multilingual, SOA, etc. True SMB competition whereby we replace SQL/Server and Oracle. (It is extremely rare we are in competition with DB2) Positioned with the other IBM data servers of IMS, CICS, DB2, Informix IDS & XPS, Lotus Domino, etc. Think of U2 as ?Additional Revenue? to IBM IBM uses U2: As a departmental solution for Strategic Call Management (SCM) For every Service Request (SR) placed into IBM World Wide, for All SW (DB2, WebSphere, etc.) & All HW (system i,p,x,z, etc.) By mid 2008. Please do not try to displace IBM U2: Since the U2 data structure is variable length, and not in a first normal form (as with DB2 & Oracle), it is a complete rewrite of applications and data structures, typically costing in the tens of millions of dollars to replace. Website Reference: The IBM U2 Product Suite Website: http://www.ibm.com/software/data/u2/ ------- u2-users mailing list [email protected] To unsubscribe please visit http://listserver.u2ug.org/
