angel@BRL.MIL (Rick Angelini <angel>) (11/14/90)
Timing is everything. As you may know, Ingres Corporation was purchased by ASK Computer Systems and the sale was finalized on November 5th. I was fortunate enough to be at Ingres headquarters for meetings on November 8th and 9th, and I came away with some very good feelings about the future of the INGRES product set. The new merged company is now a $400M company, and appears to recognize the potential for growth and improvement in the marketplace. I was involved in a meeting with the CEO and President of ASK, Sandra Kurtzig, and the best word I can use to describe her is 'impressive'. She has a good grasp of what the INGRES products can and can't do, and what the weaknesses of the 'old' company were. Based on the conversations with her, and ASK's track record, I'd say that we'll soon be seeing some improvements in product reliability, bug fixes and patches, and overall technical support. There has been a major corporate reorganization which covers Engineering and Tech Support, and hopefully we'll begin to see immediate improvement in the areas which we've always complain about. Kurtzig seemed very interested in the public perception of the product, and was genuinely concerned over many of the issues raised at the meeting. She seems to have a good rapport with users and users groups, and I'm sure she'll be quite interested in hearing what the users have to say. For anyone who was concerned about the sale of company and how it might affect the product, I'd say that those fears are probably not warranted. That is, ASK intends on keeping the INGRES tools separate from the vertical market (manufacturing) which ASK currently occupies. All in all, I'd say that the sale could only mean positive things to those of us who may not have been totally happy with the technical performance of the product. In the interest of network traffic, if you have any specific questions about my perception of the merger, I'd be glad to entertain direct E-mail questions. Rick Angelini President, North American Ingres Users Association (NAIUA) --