| Hi Jeff,
I was recently informed that we (VMS and VIA) beat IBM and Informix for
a weather information system being developed jointly at the University
of Oklahoma and Oklahoma State University. IBM and Informix were
proposing UNIX.
One reason why we beat them is because our software licenses are free to
universities. That had to be a major factor.
Another reason was because the opposition sales teams were all Sales
Reps -- no Sales Support. They had 2 Sales Reps from IBM and 1 or 2
from Informix. We had 1 Sales Rep and 2 Sales Support folks.
I do know that they showed a standard demo that had no likeness to
weather in it. We weren't allowed in there during their demo, but I
heard from a reliable source that they had difficulty making their demo
work. For a standard demo, that's pretty poor.
Regarding our demo, we asked for what they wanted to see and gave them
about 5� days of weather readings on an Rdb database. It took about 5
days to develop. I heard from our Sales Rep that our "Make it real"
strategy was a factor.
We also promoted RALLY. We let them know that we built our admitedly
simple RALLY application (2 or 3 simple Form/Reports) in less than 20
minutes. One of the customer folks asked if we would try to build a
simple inquiry and we built a quick and dirty application (1 menu and
1 or 2 RALLY F/R's in front of them. It was fast -- only 5 or 10
minutes.
We also emphasized VAX Data Distributor and our networking during the
talk portion. Don't forget VDD if the data must be distributed.
I hope some of what we did in our competitive situation is applicable
to yours. I also hope you can be up against a similar group of
starched white collars with no keyboard ability.
Kurt
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