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Spring 1997
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Just over one year ago, Gus Giobbi, chairman of IDBMA Inc, published his “I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it any more” editorial in Spectrum magazine and took the first steps on a road he hoped would lead to the fulfilment of a dream.
He wanted to change the way in which Pick and its derivatives were perceived in the marketplace and see Pick gain the recognition it deserved as “the most prevalent, successful, application-rich and cost-effective business database solution in the world.”
To do this, he proposed, the industry would need to adopt a common, mutually-acceptable symbol which would allow each ‘flavour’ to maintain its own unique character whilst presenting a united front to the rest of the RDBMS world.
Giobbi has preached [his word] for over 20 years that the Pick industry has been missing out on a terrific marketing opportunity because it could not or would not take this step by itself, so he presented a choice of possible symbols and opened the pages of Spectrum to comment. The result of this feedback and a brainstorming session with IDBMA's Technical Advisory Board was a three-dimensional blue cube, representing the multi-dimensional nature of Pick, framed by the words 'MultiValue'. The symbol was made available on a no-charge, non-exclusive licence basis and software houses, manufacturers, VARs, consultants and user groups were urged to “plaster it all over the world.”
Anyone who has tried to ‘sell’ the Pick concept to non-Pick people will sympathise with Giobbi. The Pick industry globally has a formidable presence: thousands of tried-and-tested applications, millions of users, billions of dollars in market share - more in terms of users and revenue than Oracle, Ingres and Informix combined. Yet it has virtually no market visibility in the broader RDBMS world. It is an oft-quoted statistic that Oracle spends more on marketing in a month than the major Pick players together spend in a year, so this lack of visibility is unsurprising. What does surprise the outsider, once they have grasped the concept of the Pick data model and the advantages it offers over ‘traditional’ two-dimensional RDBMSs in real-world data handling, is that we have been taking it for granted for so long. Other database vendors have only recently caught on and begun adding extensions to their products to provide this kind of functionality for their users. We have had it for over two decades, yet we seem to have lost the initiative. Giobbi thought it was time we took it back.
The MultiValue symbol was officially launched at Spectrum 96 and hailed as an idea whose time had come. Initial take-up was swift: inside three months, 104 licensees had signed up and Giobbi hoped to have 1,000 by the end of 1996. One year on, that momentum has not been maintained. As this goes to press, there are only 167 names on the register, according to Spectrum, of which only a tiny fraction is not based in the USA. Although the major players who have signed up - the likes of Data General, GA, JAC et al - have divisions around the world, it is apparent that the campaign has yet to have grass-roots impact outside the US.
This is not so much due to a fundamental flaw in the idea behind the campaign as to the size of the task Giobbi and his fellow idealists have set themselves. The concept is laudable: there is something tremendously appealing about the notion of Pick vendors collectively fighting for a bigger slice of the whole RDBMS pie instead of scrambling over each other for the crumbs Oracle and the rest leave behind. With hindsight, we can see it is probably something we should have done long ago. We know the strengths of Pick: ease of use, the power and flexibility to take whatever is thrown at it, the frugality of its resource requirements compared to other data-bases. It is the rest of the world that needs to be made to sit up and take notice.
Gus Giobbi wants to see the blue cube at the vanguard of every marketing offensive, in every trade magazine and on stands at every show and exhibition. If enough momentum is generated, he believes it will be what the Pick industry needs to catapult it out of the quirky, ‘old’ technology, ‘cult’ pigeonhole into which it has wandered and into the limelight it deserves. Of course, it is equally possible that the MultiValue campaign will fizzle out without tangible results. It could be as the sceptics predict: too little, too late; a nice idea that'll never catch on; a concept that is meaningless outside the Pick arena. Only time will tell and a year is perhaps too short a time in which to pass judgement, given the size of the mountain to be climbed.
Ultimately, what becomes of the MultiValue campaign depends on us. It will stand or fall by what we do. Giobbi has set the wheels in motion; it is up to us to keep them turning, if it is to succeed. We do not know yet what we will achieve, but it is a fact that we will never know if we never dare to try.
IDBMA, Inc (International Spectrum)Last Updated: 30 June 1999