Hi Calvin.

I often find them very interesting.  Where else do you get semi senior people from the vendors speaking so openly.

Any time a vendor makes a press release, its competitors pick it apart in the ir blogs. It gives balance, keeping each other in check (somewhat).

Obviously you need to know how to read the stuff and filter out the obvious bias.  But in general I think they are the most open debates available - often exchanges that legal .

They can be quite educational too.  I recently exchanged opinions with Marc Farley over HDP/ThP and how it compares to 3PAR offerings.  I know I learned some about 3PAR and Im pretty sure Marc learned some about HDP/ThP.

Nigel

Calvin

I do hope they help, for some pretty straightforward reasons. If, as you did, point to a video where a senior HP VP claims that a LeftHand SAN is "green" and "capacity efficent", and I think that he's blagging* it, then pointing it out and letting you and anybody else who's interested make a judgement and pass comment seems to me to be a good thing.

@Nigel; me, semi-senior? Whee, a promotion!

(*the art of convincing another person that all the stuff you just made up is in fact true)

Calvin

Another promotion! I'm afraid I'm nowhere near being the chief competitive guy at NetApp. Just one with a blog.

By all means raise the level of conversation; I'll be happy for you to do so. But may I remind you that it was you that posted up the link to the video where Chris McCall claimed LeftHand was capacity efficent.

And I haven't ignored the fact that you have a fine virtualization bundle. Just that it would be even finer with something other than LeftHand storage, since the premise of virtualization is about doing more with less; the LeftHand storage part is a very definite weak link, as it appears to do so much less with a lot more.  

The issue I raise isn't narrow, and it isn't minutiae. If the bundle you want to sell your customer is meant to give him a flying start in virtualization, but what he gets to buy from you has a boat anchor of a storage solution attached, where's the customer value in that?

Hi Calvin,

I'm a big fan of documentaries and "Fog of War" is one of my favorites (along with most of Errol Morris' stuff). Besides "Empathize with Your Enemy", there were a couple of others good ones in McNamara's "Eleven Lessons" that probably apply to this discussion too, but my favorite:

4. Maximize Efficiency

en.wikipedia.org/.../The_Fog_of_War

--Lee

Agreed... and those points cut both ways. On that note I must say I am also a big fan of Haberkorn's work. Keep up the great work.

As a customer, I find these blogs and the ensuing arguments to be amusing, at the very least, but also informative and encourage this communication as it certainly helps all parties involved to stay honest.

I do think it's a shame that we sometimes see things descend into petty bickering and personal attacks. I won't name anyone here - I'm speaking in general terms about the HP and NetApp blogs and subsequent comments I've read over the last 6 months or so.

So please keep the discussions going guys, but keep things professional. When the occasional finger pointing and not-so-subtle attempts to try and paint each other as being unprofessional start creeping in, you are not doing yourselves any favours whatsoever.

I find the arguments very good. I like to see both sides of the fence argue and show me which one is the best.

Good post, but have you thought about Blog wars and cat fights - do you care before?

I also appreciate the blogs and the discussions that go back and forth.

We recently had to choose between HP LeftHand and NetApp for our 5000 user Exchange 2007 implementation. For comparison, I pulled a bunch of information from these type of blogs which really helped in making the decision. So thanks for doing these, and please keep it up!

For those interested, we chose the HP LeftHand solution.