Why Bother with the Cheap Shots?
It's dog-eat-dog out there in the highly competitive realm of desktop virtualization/VDI, and competitors are not pulling their punches, nor should they. Each company in this increasingly crowded space is selling a different product vision, and it's in the best interest of buyers if these competitors wooing their dollars compare and contrast themselves as clearly as possible. That's just good business.
What's not good business is accusing competitors of being "caught in a lie again" and asserting that with them, "Integrity and ethics are optional." That's where I think Citrix CTO Harry Labana has crossed the line in his current spat with VMware over whether or not VMware View is a server-based computing solution.
The thing that surprises me about this--and maybe I'm just naïve--is that it seems very un-Citrix-like. Don't get me wrong; I've seen Simon Crosby go after VMware with a vengeance, but I have not heard of him calling them, in effect congenital liars who only employ integrity and ethics when it serves their hypocritical needs.
In fact, when I interviewed Simon for a Citrix profile I was working on last year, I gave him every opportunity to get in some good shots at VMware, but he refused to denigrate them (maybe that's what blogs are for). The same was true for president and CEO Mark Templeton, whom I also interviewed, and who would only praise VMware for their accomplishments.
This shameful, boring brouhaha has now entered its second round of strident claims and counterclaims, and guess who's winning? No one. Guess who cares? No one. Guess who looks bad? Everyone.
Posted by Bruce Hoard on 02/17/2011 at 12:48 PM