5:1

My company, DBI software, makes the patented, award-winning software that empowers IBM DB2 databases to function at maximum capability. Because all of our customers are IBM DB2 users, our fate is tied to a very great extent on things IBM does—or doesn’t do.

DB2 is powerful and expensive—the database of choice for market leaders in retail, finance, hospitality, gaming, insurance, media, and securities. For most companies, the decision to go with DB2 is at least a six-figure decision, and it’s not at all unusual for a company to spend millions of dollars on CPUs, memory, and licenses—to say nothing of training, personnel, and the cost of migrating data. And as the late Senator Everett Dirksen said, “A million here, a million there, pretty soon, you’re talking real money.” Even for the biggest companies, a million dollars is still a lot of money!

Yet for all of this, too many companies who have made this investment in DB2 are turning their backs and making the multimillion dollar gamble to walk away. I say gamble because it costs a lot of money, takes a lot of time, and there is no guarantee at the end that things won’t be worse instead of better. Changing databases is high-stakes poker, and the people I know in the C-suite only want to bet on sure things.

In Christian Maciel’s excellent article, “10 Scientific Ways to Lead a Loving and Lasting Marriage,” he notes, “Dr. John Gottman, is one of the foremost authorities on what makes marriages work. In fact, he is so accurate that he can predict whether you will get divorced with 96% accuracy. … Gottman noticed that healthy couples have five positive interactions for every one negative interaction.”

I think that ratio might be even higher when it comes to business.

Here’s what I think is happening to too many IBM DB2 clients:

1. These companies make a large investment in IBM DB2.


2. They use IBM’s “performance optimization tools” which actually make things worse.


3. Because the database’s performance is poor, they reach out to IBM for help.


4. They pay IBM tens of thousands of dollars in consulting fees for negligible results.


5. They reluctantly pay hundreds of thousands or millions of additional dollars in nonreturnable CPUs, memory, and licenses to get the performance they were promised in the first place


6. Lather, rinse, repeat.

You don’t have to be a relationship expert to see where six negative interactions is going. But there is another way.

IBM DB2 is a powerful database, and with the help of DBI Software, it can do more and be faster than you ever thought possible. And DBI Software gets results quickly, and costs much less. You owe it to yourself and your investment to give us a call.