IBM expands scope for IDS 14 June, 2007 By Paul Weinberg

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So observed Carl Olofson, IDC research vice president, application development and deployment.

After initially acquiring Informix in 2001 it appeared that IBM had intended to merge its own database management product DB2 with IDS. Instead, it maintained the two as separate products. Since then, IBM has made a few "incremental changes" to IDS but the product has remained the same, reported Olofson.

What is the new about the latest release, IDS 11 is its scalability, the IDC analyst noted.

"IBM sees an opportunity to use the Informix technology in a different way from DB2 and gain new customers and new market opportunities. It gives them a running head start in Europe [where Informix has a large channel] and they are going to build up [a smaller] channel here [in North America], stated Olofson.

Olofson sees "an opening" for IDS's embedded database packaging in large and mid-sized enterprises that are seeking to reduce both complexity and costs in IT.

Rather than purchase a separate database for each application, users should be able to purchase more and more applications that already contain a pre-configured and embedded database courtesy of IDS.

Olofson stated that he expects IBM to negotiate agreements with independent software vendors to install licensed IDS software on their applications. In addition, he noted that resellers will also be able to license IDS for solutions they are building for end users.

"The aim with any embedded database is to self administer. You can supply the embedded data base with an application and you don't need database expertise."

IBM had no choice but to maintain IDS as a separate product because of the loyalty of its user base to the Informix brand name, stated James Kobielus, principal analyst for data management at Current Analysis.

However, he noted, the implementation of feature parity between IDS and DB9. Included with IDS 11 is the access control security function that originally appeared on DB2-9 last summer.

What makes IDS distinct is that it is oriented around transactional database processing while DB2 contains both transactional and analytical database features, stated Kobielus. "Transactional processing supports a high volume of database updates

IDS 11 will be help smaller companies and organizations that rely upon uninterrupted information access, but don't have large IT staffs to manage numerous data server instances, stated Bernie Spang, the IBM director of data servers.

"There is ease of integrating it with their applications, including the ability to customize the footprint, to get it down to the minimum memory space required, the ability to administer the database from the application as part of what delivers the value."

Available in July, the entry pricing for five users is $850 (U.S.), he added.