Our response to the IT Skeptic

After running across this recent post about FireScope on the IT Skeptic's blog, we offer the following response, posted here in case our original comment submitted to his site does not get published.

First let us say that we’re flattered that the IT Skeptic “Rob England” pored over our site content, and as would an engineer or techie studying a set of equations, source code or a set of black and white facts, he found areas that might-could-maybe-potentially be problematic or crap as he put it. While we can all be grateful for detail-oriented types like Rob, his article suggests that the information we present on our site is errant.  

Unfortunately for Rob that is not true as the information provided actually came from our customer’s experiences as well as, from publicly available information about our competitors.  So while, Rob may feel that we are not a viable alternative to the Big 4, that is just his opinion, and hopefully most prospective customers are going to download and try our products (try that with the Big4) and see how many happy Fortune 2000 customers we have globally and give us a try.  After all, it seems that is all it usually takes.

So why would a person with Rob’s experience ad smarts go out of his way to disparage an underdog startup and aid the Big 4’s high price, extensive services and poor maintenance model that so many are dissatisfied with.  Don’t you wonder why the Big 4 continue to buy so many startups, when they supposedly have such great products???  It's called innovation!  And why is the dissatisfaction of many Big 4 customers so widely reported by the mainstream press and other notables sources???  Well, I can only speculate that Rob comes from the perspective of an engineer or techie (by the way, many on the FireScope team have been less skeptical techies for many years) and likely believes the following from an insightful article on gaebler.com:

“Right off the bat, you need to recognize that an engineer is wired differently than an entrepreneur. His training and experience have conditioned him to value quantification and objectivity. But in business, many decisions cannot be easily quantified. And when it comes to marketing . . . well, let's just say that marketing is – by nature – a highly subjective endeavor. With that in mind, here are some other things you need to know about why your engineer partner struggles with marketing. Engineers love facts. At the end of the day, engineers love facts more than anything else. The problem is that facts are only part of the marketing equation. How you present information is often just as important as the information itself. Engineers need to understand that while it's necessary to present facts in a marketing campaign, facts alone won't get the job done. Engineers are skeptical about advertising. Most engineers genuinely believe they are immune to the power of advertising. They believe this not because they are arrogant, but because they have been trained to make decisions based on logic rather than emotion. Although it's debatable whether or not engineers are truly unaffected by advertising, conflicts arise when they transfer their beliefs about advertising to the rest of they buying public. The simple truth is that consumers make their buying decisions based on a combination of logic and emotion. To be effective, your marketing campaign has to target consumers' emotions as well as their minds. Engineers avoid bells and whistles. Engineers have a "no frills" perspective on life. Their job is to find the simplest, most straightforward way of doing things. Most marketing campaigns frustrate engineers because they emphasize bells, whistles, and other features designed to attract consumers' attention. If they had their way, your marketing campaign would probably consist of a typewritten, black and white ad lacking photos or graphics of any kind. Okay, maybe that's a little extreme, but you get the idea. Someone needs to show your partner why bells and whistles are a vital part of your marketing efforts."

So why does Rob belittle the efforts of a small entrepreneurial company?  Is it because he thinks their conclusions are incorrect? Or because he loves the in-efficient model of the Big4? We have no idea. Hopefully, he will try our product and come over to the underdog’s side.

Nevertheless, in the spirit of fair competition and respecting one’s opinion, we strongly recommend that Rob and any readers of the IT Skeptic please go to BMC, IBM, HP or CA’s respective websites and feast on the facts and validation regarding return on investment (ROI) and other marketing efforts.  Good luck on that as marketing and presenting a company’s information or collateral in a palatable form is an honored and respectable profession, albeit subjective.  We do wish however that Rob would comment on our competitor’s facts in the spirit of fairness and journalistic pride.  How about it Rob…is there some fair play in the cards??? 

Sincerely,

Your loyal readers from the FireScope Team.  :)

Comments

[The IT Skeptic]

Since fair play is important to you, I'll try again posting a response here, the same one I made on my blog:

I do wish that people who accuse me of unfairness took the time to read some of the site. A simple click on the "Crap Factoid" link shows what other organisations have been similarly examined, which includes some of the big 4. My son constantly used the term "it's not fair" when he was little to mean "I don't like it".

A passionate response from an entrepreneur who presumably is the opposite of an engineer and therefore has total disregard for facts. We still await one shred of evidence to substantiate Firescope's claims.