By Brendan Foye, Zerto Enterprise Account Executive
In today’s social media age, solution providers have the ability to get their company messaging to more users than ever, quicker than ever. For many start-ups or even legacy solution providers, social media is now a primary tool used to market their solution. Many claims are made about what they can do, the value they believe they bring to the market; the dissemination of this information happens in a flash and is far reaching. And, of course, there is always significant conviction behind their claims “Here is what we do, take our word for it.”
The same goes for the good ole’ marketing “slicks”, the default spec document which is used to assist customers in checking off features/functionality; the document is used as a tool to compare “like” solutions in the market place. All of the buzz words are usually there such as “availability” “always on”. Lots of great buzz words and phrases. The SLAs provided are usually very aggressive because, well, that’s what customers want to hear. And, of course, everything is easy to get up and running. Again, “take my word for it.”
The tools above are largely the most relied upon sales/marketing sources when it comes to a customer’s perception of what a technology can do for them; and even more scary, these tools are used now more than ever, in a bigger way than ever, to qualify whether a technology will work for customers.
However in reality, there is significant risk in taking anyone’s word for it. There are numerous examples proving this out; the risk of taking marketing’s word for it. The best examples are found in the health industry and primarily the supplement industry, “Take this supplement and you’ll have arms like Arnold.” Or, “Just one pill a day you are sure to lose 50 lbs in 1 month.” I can go on but you get it. The truth is there is no easy weight loss solution; and, certainly, to get 20 inch biceps I’m thinking genetics and a lot of hard work over a very long time also come into play. But the marketing is full of conviction. It must work!
Now, let’s focus on technology. When a company, let’s say ZERTO, has the best mouse trap out there, it makes sense others will come to the marketing space with their own “me too” messaging which typically does a great job emulating/pretending to be something they are not. They have all the buzz words. The SLAs they communicate seem to be in line. Sales and marketing people are great at positioning technologies in just the perfect light. But is it always reality? How do you know if a solution really works? You guessed it. THE POC!
In the Hypervisor BC/DR space, when a POC is initiated, there is a good chance many gaps between marketing and reality will come to light; gaps which will never be mentioned in any marketing collateral and certainly won’t be highlighted on Twitter. And it’s only through a POC that the real functionality can be proven out in your environment. Below are some things you will be able to determine first-hand when doing a POC in the BC/DR space:
As for ZERTO, we know what the answers will be to the above questions so we encourage all customers do a POC. It’s fast. It’s free. In fact, the install takes less than an hour and you will typically have a fail-over report in your hands proving your DR actually works by the end of the day. This is powerful stuff. I should Tweet about it.
But don’t take my word for it.
Download your free trial of ZERTO today!