Informix chief dismisses Oracle jibe

Informix's UK MD, Jacqueline de Rojas, has hit back against allegations from Oracle CEO, Larry Ellison, that her company is struggling.

Ellison, on a visit to the UK last month, claimed he no longer feels threatened by competition from Informix. "Informix and Sybase have gone out of business. We only have two competitors: IBM and Microsoft," he said.

But in a video interview with Silicon.com, de Rojas claimed the company is enjoying strong growth and is recruiting staff heavily. She added that Informix is also seeing a lot of new business from new customers worldwide.

De Rojas, who took over from Alan Kerr as UK MD in June, added: "I think Informix has a lot of things going for it. I think we are important to the marketplace for a number of reasons: the first is that the marketplace needs choice - I think it is absolutely critical. And I think the second thing is that Informix is a nice company to do business with. Our customers are very loyal and like doing business with us, as do our partners."

She explained that Informix is changing its business focus: "Users are becoming significantly more demanding than they ever have been before," she claimed. "That requires excellent interface capabilities and excellent content management capabilities as well as the database."

De Rojas said the company is pushing its profile in the ecommerce space through a series of joint ventures, and is looking at applications for other markets such as interactive TV. "We are seeing the requirement for customers to have personalised one-to-one information, and that requires databases that can scale not just to two people, but to x million people across the Internet," she said.

For the full interview, see http://www.silicon.com/knowledgemanagement