Don't Ask for the Best
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This must happen several times a day: we get a post asking for the best of a product or approach as if there is a clear "best" for each category. Some examples are "Please tell me the best:"
- NAS
- SAN
- Operating System
- Hypervisor
The list goes on and on. And the question rarely has any more information than that. It's clear that the assumption, unstated of course, is that all of IT can be distilled to just a "List of the Current Best Products" and that that is just a super secret list and that if you ask someone will divulge the answers one by one.
This assumes that all products are simply measured on a one dimensional scale from poor to great and all you need is the product farthest towards great and that's the best answer. It disregards features, approaches, cost and other critical factors.
And the biggest issue is that different businesses and situations call for completely different products. The "best" SAN for company A might be really silly for company B. The NAS that I chose for home use for streaming by videos is hardly the same NAS that Fortune 500 is going to use for protecting all of their critical documents. Every situation is unique.
Asking questions like this is just a waste of time. Tons of opinion and conjecture will come to light with nothing useful for the person asking the question. But that they felt that they could ask such a question and get a meaningful answer means that they have a very high likelihood of taking insane, mocking or just uninformed answers as being correct.
Don't ask a question looking for what is "best". Give a scenario, give all of the relevant information. Think about all the factors that might be important and provide them up front. Then step back and provide the logic and reasoning that got you to where you are. And... most importantly: Provide the goal or business benefit that you are looking to achieve!
Then, and only then, does the community have any chance of providing useful feedback. If you provide less and get answers, those answers are not for your benefit.
I see little to none of this here in ML. But in other online forums I see this running rampant.
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I see stuff like this all the time in the Backup section in SW, then the next thing you know the entire thread is filled with vendors saying their product is the best and no real value is added until people who actually use the products come in and give opinions based on what they seen from the product in their environment. One instance I recently found funny was a rep from BE stating that BE 2014 is 100% faster, but at the time had no proof to back it up. Later someone who upgraded to from BE 2012 to 2014 came on the thread and stated that it was nowhere near 100% like they claimed. It so frustrating to me when vendors flood a thread making claims that they have the best solution when the OP does not provide all of the relevant information.
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It's really the users setting the vendors up. The vendors, more or less, have to respond in a case like that. What else can they do but throw the sale away? They are stuck. The users create a no win situation and drag everyone into it. It's horrible.
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@scottalanmiller Very very true. I just wish when the users don't post the proper information the vendors would ask better questions and try to find out more before saying hey try my product. Some vendors are good about the way they go about it and some of them just pop in and say check this out even though they don't know what the situation is and the product may not fit well with what they are trying to accomplish.
I guess I'm just a little frustrated with some vendors at the moment.
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I know it's hard out there and people are trying to make a living, but I feel that if a vendor is part of a community it is part of their responsibility to not only sell products, but to add value to the community.
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@lance said:
@scottalanmiller Very very true. I just wish when the users don't post the proper information the vendors would ask better questions and try to find out more before saying hey try my product. Some vendors are good about the way they go about it and some of them just pop in and say check this out even though they don't know what the situation is and the product may not fit well with what they are trying to accomplish.
I guess I'm just a little frustrated with some vendors at the moment.
To give them credit, their job is to sell stuff. And if a user demands to be sold something without any reason to sell it to them, it's hardly fair to expect a vendor salesperson to give up a sale of someone asking for bad advice. It's not like the person wasn't demanding that they sell them something. It's not the vendor's fault at all in that situation. They are just looking to supply what their customers are asking for.
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@lance said:
I know it's hard out there and people are trying to make a living, but I feel that if a vendor is part of a community it is part of their responsibility to not only sell products, but to add value to the community.
Agreed. But only so far as it is even more the responsibility of someone posting a question to do so in a professional, meaningful way and not set vendors up to look bad and have no real option but to do this. If a vendor tries to do something good to determine the real needs of the client they will likely just lose the sale to whoever posts fastest and says "X is best". The vendor is caught, the victim of the system. It's fixing the original poster that has to be done. They are the one initiating the situation.
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The thread that prompted this (there are many but one made me think of it) had the OP just tell me that running software released to production in the last year is "beta" software. Facepalm. What was I expecting? Once you are asking for "the best" of a product, do I really assume that they know what patching means or what a beta test is?
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@scottalanmiller said:
@lance said:
I know it's hard out there and people are trying to make a living, but I feel that if a vendor is part of a community it is part of their responsibility to not only sell products, but to add value to the community.
Agreed. But only so far as it is even more the responsibility of someone posting a question to do so in a professional, meaningful way and not set vendors up to look bad and have no real option but to do this. If a vendor tries to do something good to determine the real needs of the client they will likely just lose the sale to whoever posts fastest and says "X is best". The vendor is caught, the victim of the system. It's fixing the original poster that has to be done. They are the one initiating the situation.
I see where you are coming from, very true and well said.
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@scottalanmiller said:
The thread that prompted this (there are many but one made me think of it) had the OP just tell me that running software released to production in the last year is "beta" software. Facepalm. What was I expecting? Once you are asking for "the best" of a product, do I really assume that they know what patching means or what a beta test is?
Yikes. Some people. lol
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@lance said:
@scottalanmiller said:
The thread that prompted this (there are many but one made me think of it) had the OP just tell me that running software released to production in the last year is "beta" software. Facepalm. What was I expecting? Once you are asking for "the best" of a product, do I really assume that they know what patching means or what a beta test is?
Yikes. Some people. lol
He came back and actually tried to define beta as a slang term for something that he claimed was unique to storage. Facepalm again. More of the IT semi-pros thinking that technical terms can just be coopted willy nilly and that using correct terms doesn't matter. How little must one work in IT before it is insanely apparently that faking knowing a term or outright misusing one will not fly. It just can't. People will get confused and do things incorrectly if you tell them to do so.
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Nothing can be universally the best solution.
"It depends" is the only exception to that.
Because it depends on the organizations, needs, wants, budgets, etc. -
@scottalanmiller said:
@lance said:
@scottalanmiller said:
The thread that prompted this (there are many but one made me think of it) had the OP just tell me that running software released to production in the last year is "beta" software. Facepalm. What was I expecting? Once you are asking for "the best" of a product, do I really assume that they know what patching means or what a beta test is?
Yikes. Some people. lol
He came back and actually tried to define beta as a slang term for something that he claimed was unique to storage. Facepalm again. More of the IT semi-pros thinking that technical terms can just be coopted willy nilly and that using correct terms doesn't matter. How little must one work in IT before it is insanely apparently that faking knowing a term or outright misusing one will not fly. It just can't. People will get confused and do things incorrectly if you tell them to do so.
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@scottalanmiller I'm not sure if you spend anytime in http://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/ but that place will make you want to scratch out your eyes. People throw around incorrect technical terms like it's going out of style.
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What is best in life?
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