Competitive Business Lessons – and Did I Forget To Mention….

….the childish embarrassing moves by IDC at SNW Europe?

As you know (or should by now), I never bother to trash a competitor, even when they are not really competitive, but this was too good to pass up not only because of the sheer stupidity and immaturity (god I love being able to say that about someone else), but because it's a fantastic example of one of my most ardent business arguments. Allow me to do my mea culpa's and qualifications first:

First, I like IDC. I'm jealous of their amazing success model, and I think Pat McGovern is one of the smartest and most visionary business people ever. I do not say that lightly. That's a guy with ADD that has used it to grow a stupendous empire. I don't feel like ESG has ever competed with IDC – we don't do market share data and we don't do tracking research – the two things they dominate. I consider myself a personal friend of former IDC storage GM John McArthur. In my entire career I've never had a problem with him or anything he did at IDC or beyond. He's a good, smart human being. I say the same for Claus Egge, IDC's long time European storage guru. I don't know him as well, but we've dined and drank and compared notes on occasion – and I can tell you that he is an honorable, intelligent man. A great friend and former IDC and ESG employee is Tom Lahive, who never say's a bad word about either entity (as far as I can tell!). As a matter of fact, until now, I can't say I've ever had an issue whatsoever with anyone I've known from IDC. Alas, I can no longer say that for some others that we ran into at SNW Europe.

Second, let me tell you that I more than most realize that all is fair in the big bad world of competitive business. Sometimes ESG steals budget from the likes of IDC or Gartner, but not all that often. IDC dominates a space as Gartner does. We share some customers, and some budget buckets, but none of us does the same thing. At the end of the day, all one really wants is a chance to compete for budget bucks where we can show how our value to organization X is potentially greater than what another guy's value is. We, however, never do that head to head – i.e. we never want to be say "we do the same thing cheaper" because while 90% of business is done that way – 90% of the value/spend goes to the leader. It's dumb to be in the 90% copycat business.

I'd be not only a buffoon but also a hypocrite to chase IDC where they dominate (tracking and share research) if for no other reason than I spend my business life telling anyone who will listen that if you are not going into a blue ocean you are sniffing the backside of a market leader – which not only stinks but is pointless. How many definitive market leaders ever get toppled by a competitor versus themselves? Very, very few is how many. There are many followers who do things better, but it rarely matters. Established leaders are just that – leaders. They don't follow, and they rarely lose unless they screw something up badly or their market goes away. It almost never happens because some upstart dope builds a better mousetrap. It has nothing to do with having the "best stuff" – it has everything to do with understanding your customer. A successful market lead almost always begins with having something different that solves a real problem or lends real value to a current, sustainable market dynamic – that has yet to be addressed. Then maintaining leadership is all about actually listening to your customer and doing the right things – which may not necessarily mean doing the "best" things. Cisco does not have the "best" stuff across the board. Nor does EMC or Netapp. Nor does Data Domain or Riverbed. Guess what? It doesn't matter. Where they lead, they will continue to do so. EMC never killed Netapp nor vice versa. Huawei has better stuff than Cisco. Whoopdie doo. Cisco won't kill Riverbed. Everyone has "better" de-dupe than Data Domain, or so they say, but none of it matters. Without a monumentally disruptive market force the natural inertia of a growth market will continue to propel the leader – end of story.

I'm not saying there isn't great business being number 2, so to speak, as there clearly is – there just is futility in firmly established leadership markets if your success requires the leader to fail. If you want to pick up the (often formidable) crumbs of a market, go right ahead – the world needs alternatives – but make your goals legitimate and not fantasy. As soon as someone tells me their stuff is so much better than Microsoft (and ends it there) that they can't help but win, I know they are toast.

So, back to IDC. At SNW Europe we were just making our presence known – something we've been slowly doing for many years. ESG will be in Europe because what we do is required in Europe – the same way it is required in China. We were a bit different than most – we had nothing to sell. We were there to continue to reinforce our brand and what it is that we do – that is far different from most. In this case, we were exhibiting the ESG Lab – more successful than any other before us without question – we wanted to begin to educate the European market as to what the Lab was all about and what we are up too.

In a nutshell, ESG Lab, run by Brian Garrett, tests stuff, finds out what something can do and what it can't, and then tells folks where what it can do is applicable. We've done over 115 of them, and suffice to say that when staunch and sometimes violent competitors such as EMC, HDS, Netapp, IBM, and HP all use ESG Lab to test their stuff, we feel that we're doing a pretty fair job. Brian won't say this, but the dude owns 9 patents, has 6 pending, and knows more about how to test a product and then apply real-world analytics to why the results matter (or not) than anyone in this industry – bar none. If the guy who runs engineering at HDS, EMC, Netapp, etc. can't argue with a competitive products Lab results, methodology, or analysis, then we think we've done a pretty fair job representing what's real. We don't hide anything – we publish the methodologies, the configurations, etc. It's been one of ESG's most successful offerings and clearly has benefited users as well as the vendor community – since both want to shorten the sales cycle. Are ESG Lab's perfect? Of course not, but they are close as it gets.

At SNW Europe, Brian had two tutorials where he presented ESG Lab's methodologies for creating a test plan and executing on it. As nice folks, we gave away our test methodologies and all of the workload generators Brian and team have developed over the years – something we'll continue to evolve and continue to give away. We are not moron's – giving away a few zillion man years of workload generators will absolutely help anyone who wants to do real world product testing in their specific environments, but by doing so, ESG continues to propagate our Lab brand – and by default will continue to garner even more market influence which will equate to even more Lab validation business. We are altruistic capitalists, and damn proud of it.

So imagine the absurdity of me finding out that on at least 2, and most likely 3 or more occasions, IDC Europe people came to the ESG booth – with badges turned over, hiding their names/company, as if we were 19 years old again – to inquire about such things as "how can you be independent"? They even did it to Brian himself (which is bad because A: he is mega-brained engineer so it simply didn't compute for him, B: his integrity is above reproach and once he figured out that they were actually questioning his integrity, he was totally bummed out and C: once totally bummed out, I think he might have concocted a demonic plan to have said perpetrators end up naked in front of the Louvre somehow), who of course didn't understand and simply answered the questions.

I suppose had it only been to Brian, I wouldn't have gone out of my way to point out the 8^th grade antics of people clearly far below the intellectual and moral standard of a quality company such as IDC, but they really pissed me off by doing it to Taya and Noelle – who when having no idea what was being asked of her suggested that they speak to me, as I was walking up the isle – actually ran away. Who runs away from me? Running away earned my wrath. Standing there would have perhaps incurred my wrath, but it would have gone no farther presuming the amateur recanted.

Silly, silly people.

Comments

[marc farley]

Steve - Its just a little James Bond action without the action. Running away is funny. Maybe they were ESG stalkers - fans of yours - your European groupies.

Everyone who has worked with BG knows that he is a fantastic storage guy with total credibility. He has groupies too, apparently.

[Tony Asaro]

What people haven't figured out is that ESG Lab is successful because it provides quality insights and education on complex solutions in a way that is consumable and defensible. It answers questions for IT professionals that they can't find anywhere else.

-----Yeah but you're biased.....Steve