Dear IBM: Denial Is Not A River In Egypt ...

I used to comment a lot on the strange behaviors of others in our industry.

I received some good coaching that I should do this infrequently -- if at all -- so I have been endeavoring to work in this direction.

However, the craziness hasn't abated -- nor has the commentary.

As an example, read this recent breathless press release from IBM on their "leadership in the storage software market". 

And then go read Chris Preimesberger's of eWeek's most excellent disembowelment exercise. 

I had the pleasure of sitting next to Chris at a dinner event a while back.  Not your ordinary journalist, I'd offer.  I've found his other material very astute as well.  He's a really interesting guy to talk to as well, if you ever get the privilege.

Fun reading.

Comments

[Kevin]

Chuck,

This reminds me of HP's actions a couple months ago with regards to the Top Supercomputers list.

HP released a statement essentially saying they were the number one vendor on the list. They "topped" the list.

What it meant of course was that there were more systems on the list based on HP technology than other vendors. HP however, did not have a single system in the top 10.

I consider myself quite the skeptic these days, disecting statements from any company to reveal the truth behind their spin.

Sure IBM does it, so do countless others (including EMC I would imagine). This of course doesn't make it right, but rather one of "those things" in this business.

[Chuck Hollis]

Maybe you're right, it's common in the industry to do these sorts of "puff" releases.

For me, there's a line between over-amplification and mis-representation. IBM (as well as a few others) are starting to cross that line, which isn't good for customers, and isn't good for the industry, IMHO.

I'm not saying EMC is lily-white here, but I get to look at every press release that goes out (as do many other people here), and we routinely shut down any proposed press release that doesn't have a substantive, verifiable and worthwhile claim.

Fortunately for us, that restriction hasn't proved too onerous ;-)

Thanks for writing!