So, very briefly today, my buddy-blogger from EMC posted another LoIQ (List of Inane Questions). I say briefly because, shortly after his post, I asked to have it removed.
It’s not that I don’t enjoy the give-and-take with Barry. It’s that Barry is using our announcement last week as an avenue to pose questions that he already knows answers to. That is, feeding the FUD machine that EMC has so ineptly been clinging to for quite a while.
I had to select between 3 choices here - Answer his increasingly inane questions (few of which actually related to our announcement last week), post to his blog equally inane questions about lagging Symmetrix/DMX architecture, or just bring a halt to this silliness. I originally thought I’d select the second option and “pepper” him with a million detailed questions about EMC’s architecture and its limitations but have decided on option three to end this once and for all. I have a “day job” that requires taking care of our customers, working with engineering and development, product management, global services, marketing, and corporate communications. What is also on my plate is blogging. What is not on my plate is having to answer the most detailed of silly questions from a competitor. Barry, as you concluded one of your recent posts to me - “inquiring minds want to know.” What is your day job? And do you really have this much time on your hands?
I will never preclude answering Barry, and look forward to the next exchange. What I will not do is engage in this silly banter in public. I have neither the time, nor the inclination, to do so.
Back to my day job…
Comments (4 )
the storage anarchist on 02 Jun 2009 at 10:44 am
Since you asked, yes indeed part of my day job is indeed helping EMC’s customers, prospects and sales people cut through the misleading and irrelevant competitive positioning to see what’s really behind the curtain. I do NOT “know” most of the answers to the questions I pose, and I suspect you are not telling customers everything they need to know about HAM…this is why I am asking - giving you the chance to stop any potential FUD with direct responses.
Instead, you deleted my questions. And by doing so, you DID in fact censor me, and thus you have “precluded” answering questions that were entirely relevant to your announcement.
You may as well just have left my questions up and stated “I refuse to answer these questions.”
But I totally understand - you really don’t want people to be asking the tough questions in a public forum, and thus it is easier for you to delete them (and acknowledge doing so) than it would be to provide answers.
As I asked @HDScorp on Twitter - what exactly is it that you are trying to hide?
Michael Hay on 02 Jun 2009 at 1:58 pm
Claus I agree with your approach here, and I do wonder if our Boy Wonder, Barry, is a full time blogger for EMC without anything else to do.
the storage anarchist on 02 Jun 2009 at 7:33 pm
Thanks for the backhanded compliment, Mr. Hay, but you have absolutely zero idea how I spend my day. But I can assure you, it really doesn’t take all that much time to ask the obvious questions when your life is spent helping customers understand the practical realities of storage. In fact, I squeezed in today’s response in the 10 minutes between 2 customer briefings.
Clearly you fellows at Hitachi don’t have the time to publicly address pertinent questions, choosing instead to invest your hours in trying to mislead prospects, press, analysts and Wall street 1-on-1 about your shiny new toy. Fact is, you’ve been promising this capability to customers for over 4 years, and the best you can do after all the delays is to pre-announce it long before it will even ship - and apparently before it even goes into Beta.
Given that USP-V is over 4 years old, V-Max must have you all really scared (with good reason, to be sure). I’m just not sure your installed base is believing the “don’t worry, we have a plan” hype, especially without answers to real questions.
And please note, I have given you (collectively) every opportunity to set the record straight, and I have not (yet) resorted to misrepresenting HAM in an attempt to discredit the effort. But when you (collectively) refuse to answer the very real questions, and resort to admitted censorship in the process, you leave your audience (and me) little choice but to come to some very negative conclusions.
So tell us - what is it that you’re so afraid to reveal?
Claus Mikkelsen’s Blog » Blog Archive » Welcome Back, Kotter on 24 Nov 2009 at 11:40 am
[...] like this. Basically, since I wasn’t going to answer them, I had that one blog removed (with detailed explanation why) and ever since then I have become the “evil censorship man” (ECM). I don’t mind the digging, [...]