A Matter of Opinion

When you write about an area as volatile as storage networking, you're bound to make someone mad. Indeed, as an old editor of mine used to say, you aren't doing your job unless you're generating heat as well as light.

Well, we succeeded in making someone really mad last night by publishing the first of a series of articles on de-duplication by analyst George Crump of Storage Switzerland.

A lone ranger with the handle of "hutchins" wrote on the message board and email that Crump's first installment favored one vendor's de-dupe approach to the exclusion of others. He demanded to know whether George had been paid for work with de-dupe vendors in the past. Not happy with the analyst's answer, he challenged the article on a number of points.

In fairness, we at Byte and Switch took a risk in publishing George Crump's article as a news story. Normally, that wouldn't be a big issue: Arguably, nearly every storage analyst working out there today has been or is currently being paid for work by vendors. (In fact, my predecessor at this publication generated a small firestorm when he pointed this out very specifically a few years back.) This state of affairs does not stop us from quoting analysts and publishing their work. If an analyst is credible as a legitimate distiller of industry information, that is usually apparent and widely acknowledged.

In our view, George Crump is one of the credible analysts.On the other hand, it's clear that George has strong opinions on de-duplication. (And who doesn't?) I have to admit that these views come across clearly in the article, and after rereading it and talking it over with other editors here at TechWeb, I've decided to do three things:

With this blog, I've taken steps No. 1 and No. 2. The last step is up to George and "hutchins." I have contacted both. One thing: I've asked "hutchins" to reveal his name and affiliation, if he blogs openly. Will that be a showstopper? We'll see.0