UPDATED 15:08 EDT / JULY 13 2010

5 Things I HATE about the Technology Community [IT Gripes]

Don’t get me wrong, I harbor no illusions that my voicing these concerns will change the industry in the foreseeable future, but these things sure do make the collective blood of IT boil.

1) Vendor Benchmarking. 

Why is it that vendors actually have clauses in their purchase contracts that prohibit their technology from being benchmarked against other vendor’s products? 

The fear that performing an industry standard test (granted performed consistently between solutions) will not show a product if a favorable light is just too bad.  If your product doesn’t perform well in specific environments fix it or don’t market it to solve problems it doesn’t.  The fear that the results won’t be accurate or will come out publically intentionally unfavorable means you don’t trust the folks doing the testing which is unfortunate.  Instead you leave each of your customers to test multiple solutions.  It’s a pain in the ass and customers don’t have time. 

The solution: allow benchmarks to happen, and if your product doesn’t cut the mustard, save us all from your marketing FUD, hang up your disk drives by their SCSI cables and get out of the business.

2)      Marketing FUD.

You know what FUD stands for?  Lie!

Ever notice that EVERY product in the world is the ‘leading’, ‘world leading’, ‘worlds fastest’, etc…  I mean come on!  Every person in IT knows that there is only one right answer in IT.  (I’ll let you figure it out.)  This is why there are so many products in the first place.  Products can have a very unique fits in different environments depending upon what you’re trying to accomplish.  It would be much more helpful if a vendor, who had a product that is tested and installed in a specific environment, at scale, with customer references, could write their marketing literature to reflect this.

3) Analysts.

Well most of them anyway.  How are we to believe anything these guys actually tell us?    Some act like the mafia, and others are just prostitutes.

Vendors pay these guys to print good stuff about them.  If they don’t print good stuff, the vendor doesn’t want to pay and gets mad at the analyst.  Now if the analyst is a prostitute, then they change what they printed in order to continue to get paid.  If the analyst is mafia like, then they hold it over the vendors head that it will get worse unless they pay (leaving the analysts personal agenda being the primary motivator, not the technology truth). 

Also it seems like if you can spend time blogging and driving your twitter status you think you can be an analyst.  You can’t.  You need to listen to the vendors, ask questions of their products, find the truth, compare, develop thought leadership based on what you learn and help IT to identify trends they should be on.  You need to be an advocate to the end user. 

I am looking for the Consumer Reports for IT.  There have been a number of attempts at this to no avail or limited success. 

Wikibon started out this way.  By building an end user community of IT folks who would talk about the reality of their environment was a good start.  The problem, there was no money in it.  Users are either too busy to contribute (look at Wikipedia, only 1% of the community actually contributes compared to the number of folks who actually use it) or they don’t want to pay for the content because they can’t see how the value of paying for the information translates into something their boss will approve of. 

TechValidate is doing this to some degree.  Yes they get paid by the vendor but because the responses are anonymous, it’s harder for the vendor to ‘game the system’.  W. Curtis Preston is trying to do the same thing with his company.  I wish him luck.  It’s time for the end users to rise up and support some of these small vendors who are trying to build the Consumer Reports for IT with a small subscription donation. 

It won’t happen in a year or even two or three, but if you keep supporting them, in the next 3 to 5 years there could be a much better way to review technology for your environment.  The guys working at and running these companies are smart, and nimble and change with the times, they are up on new technology and can deliver the answers you want in the way you want to receive them, blogs, wiki’s, twitter, etc.

Give them a chance, it will help all of us.

4) End Users

…who think they are too good for the rest of us.

  I have consulted with a number of startup companies in my career.  When it comes time to have a discussion about customer case studies the room usually goes quite.  When you ask why one of their customers wouldn’t help build a customer case study the answer is, “They believe that our solution gives them a competitive advantage and they don’t want their competitors knowing what technology they are using”.  Now I could see that if it were something the end user developed, but if it is technology that anyone can buy then that is simply not ture.

Do you actually think that their competitors don’t have smart IT folks working for them who would think, “You know, if I could only get the data to my customer faster, I’d have a better business” and then go look for that technology?  The other answer from customers is “Our lawyers wont let us.  It could make it look like we are favoring one vendor.” 

Well, if vendors stopped publishing ‘FUD’ (see bullet #2) and wrote the truth, then there would be no ‘show’ of favoritism, it would just be the truth as to how Company X was able to… you get the picture. 

End users, yeah you, it is time to start sticking up for the decisions you make.  If you bought product from a vendor then have every right to talk about it publicly, you are their customer.  If you force them to go through an ROI calculation in order for you to justify the purchase to your boss, then they can use that data to prove to customers the value of the solution, which is how it works. 

And as far as a quote, help out your vendor.  You want them to make more money to support you better as a ‘partner’ not just a vendor.

5) Venture (or should I say Vulture) Capitalists.

Specifically, the kind that helped to bring down the economy in 2000.

They are just as arrogant today as they were back then.  Yes, making financial decisions is hard.  Making financial decisions about technology when you don’t know the future is even harder, but let’s use some common sense shall we. 

If you are a VC who has spent too much money to date on a technology and are at a cross roads of hiring the ‘right’ new team or jettisoning the works, if you’re not prepared to fully fund the new team to cash flow positive (versus half fund) then pull on the ejector handle.  Don’t get the ‘right’ team in place only to handcuff them with cash. 

Also, help out the new CEO create an organization that is properly filled out and help weeded out the bad eggs, you put them there in the first place.  Save the cash that is currently going to old expensive headcount that probably won’t add a ton of value.

I am sure there are more but I’ll spare you for now.


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