Yesterday I published a short post titled “I/O Virtualization and the Double-Edged Sword”. In that post, I discussed how Xsigo was criticizing FCoE for “not going far enough” in the realm of I/O virtualization. Unfortunately, I didn’t do a very good job of really getting my point across, because the discussion rapidly turned into a discussion of the merits of various interconnect technologies and why one might win over the other. While that is a great discussion to have—and I’m thrilled my site can help further that discussion—it wasn’t really the key point behind my article. I/O virtualization was only the catalyst to prompt the original post.
Let me see if I can more clearly articulate what I’m trying to say here. If you are a Twitter user and into virtualization or storage, then you probably are following either Chad Sakac of EMC (@sakacc on Twitter), Vaughn Stewart of NetApp (@vaughn_stewart on Twitter), or both. That being the case, you are probably very familiar with the extensive “discussions” that take place between the two of them. Both of them are very passionate about storage and virtualization, but they have differing viewpoints. Now, before I’m accused by NetApp of being an EMC bigot (which would be ridiculous given the coverage I’ve given NetApp) or accused by EMC of being a NetApp bigot (that, at least, might be understandable as I’m just now starting to learn EMC storage), let me say that I’m not endorsing either product. NetApp’s products and EMC’s products are different; each of them has strengths and weaknesses in different areas.
Now, ask yourself, “Why do these products have different strengths and weaknesses?” Do you know the answer? These products have different strengths and weaknesses because of the technology decisions each company chose to make in the products’ development. NetApp chose one path, EMC chose another. For NetApp, that has created certain efficiences, certain strengths—and corresponding weaknesses. Likewise, EMC’s technology decisions have resulted in their products having certain strengths and weaknesses. Neither of these products is perfect. For NetApp to claim that “their way is the right way” is ridiculous; their way is only one of many different ways to accomplish something. The same is true for EMC. And, by extension, the same is true for every other technology vendor on the planet.
You want more examples? Consider the architectural differences between VMware ESX/ESXi and Microsoft Hyper-V. The technology choices made by each company created inherent strengths and weaknesses in each product. VMware claims their choices are the best choices; Microsoft believes their architecture is the best. Clearly, neither product is perfect. Both products have their flaws.
The real key takeaway here is that no technology vendor has the right to throw rocks at another technology vendor. All technology vendors live in glass houses. For VMware to claim that Microsoft’s architecture is all wrong is, well, wrong. For EMC to say that NetApp’s technology choices are stupid would be wrong. For Xsigo to claim that FCoE is the wrong path for I/O virtualization is wrong (although, personally, I don’t consider FCoE an I/O virtualization technology, but that’s a different discussion for a different day). Why? Because every company has to make technology choices, and those technology choices will—by the very nature of technology—automatically create inherent differences, strengths, and weaknesses in the resulting product. And when you accept that truth (and it is a truth, I promise you), then you see why vendors should not engage in negative marketing. When a vendor engages in negative marketing about the competition, that vendor is simply inviting others to pick apart the flaws in their own products.
Of course, I’m not naive enough to believe that vendors will stop negative competitive marketing overnight. Still, I stand firm in the belief that those vendors that focus on the strengths of their products instead of the flaws of others’ products will move ahead. I’m certainly more likely to do business with them.
I’d be interested to hear what others have to say. Voice your position in the comments.
Disclosure: As you probably know, I work for a reseller who represents many different vendors and manufacturers. My words here are not endorsed by my employer, nor do I represent my employer in this area.
Tags: Cisco, FCoE, Networking, Virtualization, Xsigo
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Well put, Scott.
While negative marketing is tiresome, calling out the differences between your product and your competitions product in combination with explaining why your believe your way to be better may be a better path.
As you say, strengths and weaknesses abound in any competitive market space and those folks should act like grownups. It’s a turn off to me to have a vendor rep bash their competition rather than tout their own product. And when that happens, I tune it out.
-Stacy
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Couldn’t argee more Scott, same goes for infrastructure designs, lasagne recipes and optimal lawn mowing strategies. There is no right or wrong, there is simply what you believe to be the best choice for the solution at hand.
The sooner the negative marketing stops, the better for all of us.
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While I generally agree that it is better to engage in positive marketing, negative competitive marketing does have its place. An obvious example is if a competitor attacks your products or pricing in public – a response may be warranted or necessary. Similarly, a competitor’s misleading comments about its own product may require setting the record straight as they can indirectly be negatively impacting your products in comparison. Finally, negative marketing sometimes just makes sense. Our political office aspirants spend fortunes upon developing effective campaign strategies – and judging from the nearly universal practice of mud-slinging, it is obvious that it works. While I personally don’t believe in that approach, I also don’t believe in refraining from competitive comparisons either. I’d rather see the manufacturers put their opinions and evaluations on the table and then make my own decision.
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Steve,
Rebutting misleading claims is not the same as negative marketing. I feel that it is absolutely possible for a vendor—or a solutions provider—to refute incorrect claims made by a competitor. I also absolutely feel that its possible to provide competitive comparisons without devolving into negative marketing, although it can be tricky at times. It’s really all about how you approach it.
Stu, Stacy,
Thanks for reading and commenting!
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Hallelujah Scott. I’ve always tried to take this route. Not always succeeded, but always tried.
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Scott,
You bring up a very valid point that many technical discussions/disagreements are based on a architectural decision (many ways to get to similar results), but it gets blurred because engineers inherently want binary answers to questions. Since there seems to be some disagreement or confusion on the difference between rebuttals and negative marketing, I wonder if you might give some examples that you believe are in each definition?
Speaking from NetApp’s perspective (Vaughn works on my team), we focus our efforts on two concepts: (1) Highlighting the value that NetApp provides to customers, (2) clarifying situations where we believe our competition is potentially misleading the market by making generic claims that are not actually supported. NOTE: We fully realize that one person’s consideration of “misleading” is another person’s definition of “scope of the problem”. I suspect that many people intermix “misleading” and “scope of the problem”, which causes alot of the perception that the vendors are trying to create confusion or are just fighting to fight.
Regarding #1, I believe that everyone would agree that this is the primary function of marketing. Align customer problems with value that we bring to help solve those problems. I’d offer this as an example of #1, http://blogs.netapp.com/virtualization/2009/09/space-efficiency-performance.html
Regarding #2, I like to use the analogy of reading the resumes of technical people. We’ve all seen plenty of resumes that contain every technical acronym under the sun. Our job is to figure out how much the person actually knows (or has experience) with those technologies, and how many are making claims because they read a recent magazine article. When we approach our competition’s claims, we take a very similar approach. We attempt to highlight where the realities may not align to the claims. Some people may claim that this is “negative marketing”, but our intent is to make sure that customers have all the facts in front of them to make the best decision for their company. I’ll offer this as an example of #2, http://blogs.netapp.com/virtualstorageguy/2009/08/emc-the-storage-most-integrated-with-vmware-the-conclusion.html
One of the great things about social media and open comment systems is that it allows a greater level of transparency and discussion between vendors, systems integrators and customers. This is very difficult to do in a 5 minute demo or a 1hr PPT presentation.
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BTW - I’m sure that looking through the other lens, it might seem different, but if you look at those twitter storms as they erupt they have two things in common (from my standpoint).
1) They get triggered by a negative comment (we do X ___ y% better than EMC! Or a vendor retweeting “Customer ABC doesn’t like product M” - always with no context). I won’t claim that it’s unidirectional, but i will state that from where I sit, it sure feels that way. Perhaps it’s inevitable for EMC as the largest (no implication of best) in our relative space.
2) My position is never that my colleagues at NetApp (including Vaughn) are inhernetly wrong architecturally. My perspective has always been that there are tradeoffs in every design, in every decision. In my experiences the things that make you great (people, products, companies) in one context - are exactly the same that hurt you in other contexts. I’ve even publicly conceeded points where the advantage/disadvantage tradeoff isn’t in EMC’s favor in a particular context. So far, I’ve never managed to get a response in kind that I’ve seen at least.
Each of those multivendor iSCSI and NFS posts (the most popular I’ve ever posted - suggesting people want more openness, less vendor propaganda) have been efforts where I’ve carried a huge chunk (I’d go so far as to say the marjority bulk) of the burden, and fought through the difficulties inherent in getting competitors to align. I’m trying to walk the walk, not just talk the talk.
I wonder if next time my blood starts to boil due to #1, if instead of getting rolling on twitter, I should just link to this post.
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Scott:
Good post and completely agree with you. While “negative marketing” can be entertaining, I think customers quickly tire of it. Most IT shops are heterogeneous environments and customers are generally not pleased when their vendors squabble like cranky two-year-olds.
Now, having said that, as one of those aforementioned vendor marketing guys, its not always that simple. Anytime you make a subjective comment about a competitor’s product/feature/technology, you open yourself up to charges of “going negative” because “negative” is often in the eye of the beholder.
Omar Sultan
Cisco -
Scott,
Nice post; one which I am in philosophical agreement with. Yet I am critical that what you seek is a romantic fantasy made impossible my the nature of capitalism. Companies take products to market with the belief that they have an ideal solution whether the product is flawless, imperfect, or unsound.
This belief is consistent through all organizations.
So I advocate on the behalf of customers who deserve to understand the details on how a technology works in consideration to their use case. Customer’s are entitled to understand the differences in technologies which on slides appear to be the same.
As the ‘Truth Machine’ has yet to hit the market I expect technical advisers, like yourself, to take on this role.
This places an emphasis on folkslike you to become experts and in educating the market even if in doing so you may run the risk of straining a vendor relationship.
In this role I see you will need to do three things (which at present I don’t see).
1. Articulate on the differences in these products for the betterment of the community? If doing so cause you issues with EPlus, let me know I’ll cover you on our side. I point this out as even in this post you don’t articulate differences.
2. When you suggest a storage related best practice make it an open if you are without empirical evidence that you can elaborate on and share with us. This is a much better practice than simply recommending one vendor’s spokesman should speak on your behalf.
3. Be Transparent and avoid the possibility of being accused of having a conflicting interest. This one is tough as it requires the disclosure of sources of revenue, service, products, etc, but in doing you will earn trust of the community you serve.
The debates Chad & I have are in the best interest of customers and are founded on different philosophies, so please engage as the ‘Truth Machine’ and keep us honest.
Again, great post.
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Great comments, everyone. I do appreciate the time each and every one of you has taken to read and respond.
I think the key sticking point for most people is that “fine line” between comparisons and negative marketing. As with most things in life, the answer is “it depends.” Vaughn, I know you don’t like that answer—especially when it comes to meeting a customer’s storage needs—but the truth is, it really DOES depend.
Consider the context, wording, and tone of a comment. I can make a comment about how I like the way NetApp handles RAID groups and aggregates, or I can say something about how EMC doesn’t have the ability to manage logical blocks of storage like NetApp can. Clearly, I can’t convey tone here, but we all recognize that the way in which something is said can carry as much information as what is actually said. It’s my personal opinion that we’re all capable of presenting comparative information while remaining respectful of our competition. It’s all in how we present the information. I’m not saying we shouldn’t paint ourselves in the best light. What I am saying is that it’s possible to paint ourselves in the best light without painting our competitors in the worst light. Recognize that your competitor has some strengths, but also weaknesses, and freely admit that whatever information you might have won’t be as complete as the information that competitor could provide. If you’re so confident about the quality of your solution and the ability of your solution to meet the customer’s needs, you won’t need to tear down the competitor.
BTW, the reason I didn’t articulate differences in this post was because this post wasn’t about the differences. It was about how we handle the differences.
Again, I do appreciate everyone’s time. Please note that I, personally, am always striving to be able to be the “Truth Machine,” as Vaughn put it, and sometimes that means calling a vendor out. That doesn’t mean I’m not your partner, not your fan, or not your supporter. I’m just looking out for the customer.
Thanks everyone!
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Word.
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Negative marketing works - or people, politicians and companies wouldn’t fund it.
I’m absolutely not a fan of leading any campaign with slag first - but if it came down to it, would I ask my employers to not use negative marketing at all? Um, no. I like feeding my family. I respectfully disagree with Scott that its “wrong” for someone to say they have the “right” way. If they aren’t that passionate do I want their products?
We can ask for it to be used less, as we cyclically seem to, but that’s like asking for flag football to be treated the same as the NFL.
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What I think a lot of vendors (who in many cases pollute blog posts with this my stuff is better than yours crap) fail to realise is that in a lot of cases the architects, engineers and consultants who read these blogs dont actually have a choice in what hardware they are asked to work with
As an example I work for a leading Global BPO and we have a target hardware platform that we have to follow (i.e. HP Blades for servers, Windows or OEL for OS, VMWare for Virtulisation, NetApp for storage, Cisco for network gear etc). The decision to prime these as strategic vendors (with favourable pricing/discounts etc) was made way above my head (and I suspect many people reading these blogs). Ditto when I was a consultant going into different companies in my last job the same rule applied - you had to source from the strategic partner
So im not interested in vendors telling me their solution is better, quicker, more compliant, cheaper etc. Im interested in them telling me how it works, how it integrates, what issues it may have? What have they got coming, what are they doing, what are the customers seeing in reality (such as you Scott)
So please keep up the good work. I for one sure appreciate it
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Scott, I like your objective analysis about most of the things you write about. It is a significant value for a consultant and blogger. It is unfortunate but a reality of life that views are colored one way or the other. While I am not an expert at IO virtualization, I can very well see your points from my experience as someone who had worked for a unix OS vendor and boy, our version of the OS was always better!
Thank you for being objective which makes reading your blog a pleasure and informative!
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Nice summary Scott - -well put
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Scott - great job at trying to elevate the conversation.
It’s much easier to slam the competition or try to boil something down to a battle that can be fought in < 140 characters, but that usually doesn’t get to the real issues. Glad to see that there are still some willing to write (and read) and little more.
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