Far too many times I have bought something with much anticipation only to be disappointed. If it wasn’t the way it looked or what it was promised to do; it was something else that fell short of my expectations. I have to say that one of the few companies that go beyond my expectations are the ones I keep going back to. The one I like to frequently talk about is Apple. Their products often surprise me (in a good way) and the intangible features that brings a deep satisfaction way beyond what is advertised. The “new drug” for me is Samsung and Hyundai (cars).

American marketing plays the leading role in setting this expectation. It is the marketing that has become the “American” culture… The “must have” the newest, coolest and flashy-est toys that defines who we are. Unfortunately, marketing of these products almost always falls short of the actual product itself. We all seem to hang on the hope that these products will exceed our expectations. This is why “un-boxing” videos are so popular on YouTube. Product reviews and blogs are also a good way to keep companies honest and helping us with our “addictions” to our toys. This marketing culture is not only limited to personal electronics but is also true for products in the business enterprise as well.

Marketing in the Business Enterprise

The Backup Tape

I remember having to buying backup tapes for my backups. I have often wondered why and how they can advertise 2x the native capacity of the tape? How can they make that claim? For example, a SDLT320 tape is really a 160GB tape (native capacity). How do they know that customers can fit 320GBs on a 160GB tape?” After doing some research, the conclusion I came to was that they really don’t know! It was a surprising fact to me that they can make such a claim based on speculation. How can they do this and get away with? It is easy… It is what I call the “Chaos Factor”. This is when someone or something takes advantage of a situation to further their cause.
In the case of the backup tapes, they capitalize on a few things that facilitate the Chaos Factor:

1. The Backup Software and

2. The Business Requirements.

The Backup Tape “Chaos Factor”

1. The Backup Software

Tape manufacturers know this all too well. Backup software is very complex. Virtually all backup administrators are far too busy worrying about one thing; completing the backups successfully. Looking to see if tapes are being utilized to meet its advertised capacity is not something that is even thought about in the day-to-day operation. In fact, the only time tape utilization ever comes up is if management asks for it. When it is requested, it is usually a time consuming exercise as backup software does not have good reporting facilities to compile this information readily. Tape utilization is not a concern.

1. The Business Requirements

Another reason is how backup software uses tapes. Tape backups are scheduled by jobs. Most jobs are completed before the tape are filled up. Depending on the companys’ policy, most tapes are ejected and stored off-site. So tapes are rarely ever be filled up because of this policy! This is normal for backup jobs and it is when companies leave tapes in the drive(s) to fill them up goes against why they do backups in the first place. Backup tapes are meant to be taken off-site to protect from disaster. It is really the ONLY time (other than having backups larger than a single tape) that a tape can actually be fully utilized.

So this Chaos Factor is also used in the business of data storage. The SAN market is another one of where the protection of data trumps our ability to efficiently manage the storage. The SAN market is full of dirty secrets as I will outline them below.

The SAN “Chaos Factor”

A dirty secret of the storage industry is the use of marketing benchmark papers. Benchmark testing papers are designed to give the impression that a product can perform as advertised. And for the actual paper itself, it may be true, but sometimes these tests are “rigged” to give the product favorable results. In fact, sometimes these performance numbers are impossible in the real-world. Let me illustrate.. For example, I can type about 65 words per minute. Many people can and will view that as average, but if I wanted to “bend the truth”, I can say I can type 300 words per minute. I can technically type “at” 300+ words per minute, but in the real world, I don’t type like that. What good is a book with 1 word (at) printed on 300 pages? This kind of claim holds no water but it is the same technique and concept used for some of these technical papers. Although the results are touted, keep them honest by asking what their customers seeing in their performance on a day-to-day operation.

Here is another technique that is commonly used by vendors. It is what I call the “smoke and mirror” marketing. It is a tactic used to mimic a new technology, feature or product that is hot. The main goal of this is to create the feature at the best possible price and downplay the side-effects. This is the deliberate engineering around providing the feature set at the expense of existing features. Here is an example. I bought a new Hyundai Sonota last year. I love the car, but I am not crazy about the ECO feature that comes with it. I was told that I would save gas with this mode. Although I have to say I think I get a few more miles on a tank of gas, the cost I pay in lost power, torque and responsiveness is not worth me using this feature at all. I believe this feature as well as a smaller gas tank capacity eventually lead to a class-action law suite over Hyundai’s gas mileage claims. So for a vendor to incorporate new features they sometimes have to leverage existing infrastructures and architectures because it is what they already have. In doing so, they now have an inferior product by emulating new features and masking or downplaying the effects. The prospective customers are not going to know the product well enough to know the impact or these nuances. They often just see the feature set in a side-by-side comparison with other vendors and make decisions based on that. While the details are in the fine print, it is almost never looked at before the sale of the product. As a seasoned professional, I commonly do my due diligence to research their claims. I also am writing this to help you avoid making these mistakes by asking questions and researching before making a major investment for your company.

Here are some questions you should ask:

• What trade magazines have you been featured in lately? (last year)
• What benchmarking paper is available for review
• How does that benchmark compare to real-world workloads?
• What reference architectures are available?
• What customers can I talk to on specific feature set(s)?

Here are some things to do for research

• Look through the Administrator’s Guide for “Notes” and fine print details. This will usually tell you what is impacted and/or restricted as a result of implementing the features
• Invite the vendors for a face-to-face meeting and talk about their features
• Have the vendor present their technologies and how they differ from the competition
• Have the vendor white-board how their technology will fit into your environment
• Ask the vendor to present the value of their technology in relation to your company’s business and existing infrastructure
• If something sound too good to be true then ask them to provide proof in the form of a customer testimony

I hope this is good information for you because I have seen time after time, companies making a purchases into something that isn’t the right fit. Then they are stuck with it for 3-5 years. Remember, the best price isn’t always the best choice.