Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mailrus!ames!pacbell.com!pacbell!sactoh0!unify!rdk386!ron
From: ron@rdk386.uucp (Ron Kuris)
Newsgroups: comp.databases
Subject: Re: Is Unify perfect?
Message-ID: <1990Jun29..2467@rdk386.uucp>
Date: 29 Jun 90 18:44:42 GMT
References: <205@twg.UUCP> <1990Jun27.170602.8596@mrspoc.Transact.COM>
Reply-To: ron@rdk386.UUCP (Ron Kuris)
Organization: At Home, Sacramento, CA
Lines: 72

In article <1990Jun27.170602.8596@mrspoc.Transact.COM> itkin@guinan.Transact.COM writes:
>bill@twg.UUCP (Bill Irwin) writes:
>
>>I've only been reading this newsgroup for a few weeks, but I can't recall
>>more  than  one  article about Unify.  Is this because I'm the  only  one
>>using  this  product,  or because it works so well noone  needs  to  post
>>articles about it?  8^)
>
> [ stuff deleted ]

>Now for a reasonable answer to Bill's question...
>
>No, Bill, you're not the only user of Unify (or ACCELL or any other Unify
>corporation product).  Speaking for the San Francisco Bay Area, there are
>dozens of users (that is, customers).  In the Unify Users Group of Northern
>California, we have several dozen members in Northern California and a couple
>of dozen more from around the country and around the world (yup - we have
>members from several continents).  So it's not, as far as I can tell, a
>lack of users that keeps communications down.
>
>So what is it?  Well, in spite of having dozens of customers in my area,
>I suspect that this doesn't reflect a significant market share.  Unify has
>made some significant sales/deals, but it may be that those customers are
>not particularly communicative (AFCAC 251, Boeing, Triad).  The smaller
>sites certainly communicate amongst themselves (we have a mailing list
>for Unify related issues - UUG-dist@mrspoc.Transact.COM - that is used
>by people all over the country) and through their Users Groups (there
>are groups all over the USA - I don't know about other countries - sorry
>Bill).
>
>So why isn't there more traffic about Unify on USENET?  Maybe Unify's
>products ARE very stable.  Maybe it doesn't take a lot of discussion to
>figure out how to deal with problems in Unify and ACCELL.  Or maybe all
>the customers are afraid of Nico :^>~ !
>
>Seriously, I've also been surprised at how (relatively) little traffic 
>there is about Unify products.  I have no doubt that we'll hear a bit
>from Unify here.  I'm willing to believe that their products are more
>stable than the competitions.  Sadly, I'm also willing to believe that
>they have a smaller market share, and therefore a lower volume of users
>AND complaints.
>
>Anyone else have any ideas?
> [plug deleted]
I think some of the contributing factors are:

(1) Unify products are usually very stable when they finally make it
out the door.  Our test suites are very extensive and test a lot of
the product ( but not all -- Right Bob B.? ).

(2) Unify has their own internal newsgroups (which have TONS of traffic).
Some of these newsgroups will be available to some support customers soon.

(3) You already mentioned that the big customers are generally quiet.

(4) Unify's Product Incident Tracking System (PITS) is a complex accell
application that is ported new releases generally before it is shipped,
as an actual usage test.  All "bugs" are reported, tracked, and fixed
through this system.  We have close to 20,000 bugs (over many years)
which have been tracked (yes, a lot of them are operator error, and even
documentation bugs).

(5) Management is very responsive to problems (no need to post to Usenet
to get your problem solved!).  I recently remember applying a bug fix to
a customer who didn't even have support because the bug was serious.

(6) Unify has the "unifybug" script which mails problems direct to Unify.
(I'd like to see more traffic here, too!).

-- 
...!pyramid!unify!rdk386!ron -or- ...!ames!pacbell!sactoh0!siva!rdk386!ron
It's not how many mistakes you make, its how quickly you recover from them.