Setting the Record Straight

pfrancisco — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 23:49:21 GMT

We came across a series of blog posts the other day which seemed to insinuate that Netezza and other competitors might be trying to shape our 10-100X performance message on the backs of comparisons to antiquated, end-of-service life systems and not comparing to current competitors' platforms . When we got to this one - "Database Customer Benchmarketing Reports" - I felt we just had to correct the record, so I wrote a response to Greg Rahn's posting to give Netezza's side of the story, namely that

we are as up-front as possible with prospective customers and use the customer benchmark testing/POC process to prove out Netezza's performance, value and simplicity value propositions;
the results of other products' performance come from our prospects/customers and not the result of Netezza running the tests on those platforms;
not only do we test against the incumbent systems, but there is almost always at least one other current competitive system that is included in the POC process;
the PowerPoint deck on which Greg was doing his analysis contained some rather ancient (in enzee-years, anyway) comparisons with versions of the NPS appliance that we have not sold in as much as 4.5 years & was really not much of a data set on which to base his analysis; and
the "proof of the pudding is in the tasting" - Netezza's success rate of converting prospects to customers through the customer benchmarking process remains very strong.

In short - we make every effort to keep the Netezza website contents both accurate and clear and we definitely feel confident in standing by our 10-100X performance claims. It would be great to have more than the Netezza "product marketing guy" clarify things - while I know some of the excellent results recent customers have seen in POC, no one knows them better than our customers & SI partners themselves.

Thinking Inside the Box

Setting the Record Straight