Established in 1980 as Relational Database Systems Inc.. The company was renamed to Informix in 1988.

Most customers run Informix products on departemental or enterprise class [Unix] servers. However, there is a [NT] [port].

Informix also was one of the first vendors to port their products to [Linux].

1980 release of C-[ISAM] ([C] routines for indexed sequential files)
1984 release of Informix-[SQL] and Informix-ESQL/C (tools)
1986 release of Informix-[4GL] (tools)
1987 Informix-SE¹ ([RDBMS])
1988 release of [WingZ] ([Macintosh]), probably one of the first graphical [spreadsheet]s.
1990 release of Informix-Online (Online-4.x, 5.x) (RDBMS)
1993 release of Informix-Online Dynamic Server (Online-7.x) (RDBMS)
1994 release of NewEra ([OO] tools)
1995 purchase Illustra (OO RDBMS)
1997 release Informix-Universal Server (Online-9.x)
1998 purchase of Red Brick systems ([data warehouse|data warehousing], [OLAP]², [data mining])
1999 purchase of Cloudscape (Java based RDBMS), i.Reach and i.Sell
2000 release of Informix Dynamic Server.2000 and Internet Foundation.2000

In the early 90ies, Informix grew explosively to be a leading database vendor, competing with [Oracle], [IBM] and [Sybase].

Then it lost considerable market share, mainly because of :

some very creative accounting, resulting in over-estimation of the shares
a bug ridden product release,
incoherent management, strange acquisitions ( people started wondering what Informix actually was selling).
and... last but not least fierce competition of other vendors, mainly Oracle.

The database-business was bought by IBM in 2001. The remaining part of Informix. was renamed to [Ascential] software and is focussing on e-commerce solutions.

IBM states it will integrate Informix technology in [DB2], which, of course, remains their flagship. IBM will continue to sell and support most products but will enhance only the more popular ones.

¹ Standard Engine
² OnLine Analytical Processing

http://www-4.ibm.com/software/data/informix (informix's new home;))
http://www.informixhandbook.com/index_ibmstory.html (milestones)
http://www.iiug.org/techinfo/faq/faq_top.html (the Informix Technical FAQ)

Informix (thing)