To help clients cut costs and respond quickly to market trends, IBM has unveiled new Informix database software. Informix 11.7 , which was codenamed "Panther" in development, helps clients and partners speed the deployment of critical business solutions at lower cost while boosting performance by as much as 50%.
Informix was one of the earliest enterprise DBMSs to adopt Linux. The first Informix database on Linux was released in 1998, and Linux has continued to be a mainstream platform for Informix, currently deployed by enterprise customers for mission-critical applications, according to Jerry Keesee, director of World Wide Development for Informix.
Among the key new enhancements featured in Informix 11.7 are innovative data compression - which requires up to 60% less storage than competitors' products, says Martin Wildberger, vice president, World Wide Development, IBM. Additionally, he notes, the new Flexible Grid reduces administration time by up to 80% by giving customers the flexibility to scale data management across regional or global clusters while mixing existing and new equipment, different hardware types and different operating systems. With Informix, Flexible Grid customers no longer need to plan scheduled down time for maintenance or upgrades. And, in addition to a free developer edition of Informix, the new Innovator C-Edition is free to download and deploy - with redistribution option available for partners.
"Companies and customers worldwide are recognizing the need to use information more effectively," says Wildberger, commenting on the market drivers for the enhancements in the new release. "For example, a global IBM study of more than 2,500 CIOs showed that 83% survey respondents identified analytics - the ability to see patterns in vast amounts of data and extract actionable insights - as the way they will enhance their organizations' competitiveness. The new high-performance Informix software helps businesses by making it easier and faster to power business analytics along with transactional applications - boosting performance by as much as 50%. As a result, customers can respond quickly to market trends, maximize sales opportunities and reduce equipment costs."
Informix is supported on a variety of Linux distributions which include the current versions of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES), Asianux, Debian and Ubuntu, notes Current versions of Fedora and openSUSE are supported by the Informix Developer Edition. Informix 11.7 Virtual Appliance is also available on SLES 11.
For more information on the release, go here.
Read "Informix 11.7: The Beginning of the Next Decade of IBM Informix," by Richard Wozniak, program director, Information Management Marketing, IBM Software Group, in the October E-Edition of Database Trends and Applications.