Top five vendor-on-vendor dust-ups
After Nutanix's and VMware's public fallout over marketing campaigns and emails, CRN picks our favourite examples of vendors getting catty
Execs at the biggest vendors in the channel are often unflappable characters, but occasionally the civility vanishes and the handbags come out.
Nutanix CEO Dheeraj Pandey recently clashed with VMware COO Sanjay Poonen over a provocative marketing campaign, leading to, as is so often the case, the publication of a retaliatory blog.
Following this latest vendor squabble, we have picked out some of our favourites from the last few years.
ConnectWise vs Kaseya
ConnectWise and Kaseya clashed in 2017, after ConnectWise released an audio file of what it claimed was a Kaseya salesperson trying to poach a client.
In the short audio clip, the caller can be heard trying to poach a customer of ConnectWise's LabTech, seemingly suggesting that ConnectWise is shutting the platform down.
ConnectWise boss Arnie Bellini accused Kaseya of spreading "fake news" (a term that was at the height of its popularity at the time) in a blog post titled Setting the Record Straight.
He also slammed the vendor for "voicemail blasting many ConnectWise partners with totally false information".
The voicemail can be heard here.
But Bellini didn't stop at publishing an angry blog, contacting Kaseya's CEO directly via email, with a letter from lawyers attached.
Kaseya CEO Fred Voccola took things up a notch with his own blog, titled Really Setting the Record Straight.
In the blog he denied Bellini's accusations, claiming that ConnectWise had emailed him saying "come on man" and "from one Italian to another". This seemingly friendly email was attached to a threatening letter from ConnectWise's lawyers.
He also denied all the allegations, including that Kaseya claimed ConnectWise is shutting the platform down, signing off with: "Results are what count, ConnectWise, not words."
Bellini however held out an olive branch to his peers last year, calling for a truce.
Verdict: Certainly juicy - particularly with audio evidence - but a civil ending means that ultimately all's well that ends well
Handbags rating: 7/10
Top five vendor-on-vendor dust-ups
After Nutanix's and VMware's public fallout over marketing campaigns and emails, CRN picks our favourite examples of vendors getting catty
Rubrik vs Commvault
In a nod to the Trump administration, Commvault accused Rubrik of presenting "alternative facts" in 2017.
Much like Cylance, Rubrik embarked on a PR tour when it launched into the UK, taking aim at older backup vendors including Zerto, NetApp and Commvault.
Commvault took the brunt of attack, with Rubrik claiming that it, and other vendors, were desperately on the hunt for something to stop it in its tracks.
Speaking of an unspecified vendor, Rubrik's western Europe boss Alex Raistrick told CRN: "There's one vendor who, in their eyes, have started to try to design a ‘Rubrik killer'.
"That's how much of a threat we are to them, and there is another vendor who has just had a worldwide call on how to combat the Rubrik threat, so for us that is great validation."
The vendor was not named, but Commvault got in touch with CRN immediately after the story was published, insisting on putting across its side of the argument.
In returning fire, Commvault's chief communications officer Bill Wohl said that Rubrik was presenting "alternative facts" (an Orwellian phrase that had then just been coined by Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway).
"There is no doubt that that's the technique that is being used," Wohl added.
"If you want to get feature for feature and function for function there isn't anything that Rubrik does that Commvault hasn't already been doing, but I can give you an exceptionally long list of things that Commvault does that Rubrik doesn't even have on the drawing board.
"If you get behind the marketing hype and really look at what they can accomplish and what we can accomplish, there really isn't a comparison."
Verdict: Accusing anyone of presenting "alternative facts" was bound to grab headlines at this time, but ultimately this was nothing more than words
Handbags rating: 6/10
Top five vendor-on-vendor dust-ups
After Nutanix's and VMware's public fallout over marketing campaigns and emails, CRN picks our favourite examples of vendors getting catty
AWS vs Oracle
This is less a dust-up and more a long-running feud.
Oracle founder Larry Ellison, not known for his sweet disposition, cannot resist the opportunity to swipe at public cloud leader Amazon Web Services (AWS) on any earnings call in which he participates.
Over the years the regular jibe has come when comparing Oracle's database with AWS' offerings - with Ellison mocking Amazon for both the technology and pricing behind its product.
More recently Ellison rattled off a list of AWS flaws at Oracle's San Francisco partner event last October, focusing particularly on perceived security flaws, while also mocking it for using Oracle over its own solutions.
AWS CEO Andy Jassy hit back soon after, revealing that the e-commerce giant is in the process of moving all its databases off of Oracle and over to its own platforms - claiming it will have done so by the end of this year.
In latest episode of "uh huh, keep talkin' Larry," Amazon's Consumer business turned off its Oracle data warehouse Nov 1 and moved to Redshift. By end of 2018, they'll have 88 per cent of their Oracle DBs (and 97 per cent of critical system DBs) moved to Aurora and DynamoDB. #DBFreedom
— Andy Jassy (@ajassy) November 9, 2018
Ellison responded by saying that no "normal person" would move their database over to Amazon.
"You've got to be willing to give up tons of reliability, tons of security, tons of performance... Nobody, save maybe Jeff Bezos, gave the command, 'I want to get off the Oracle database'," he added.
Jassy also took the opportunity to poke fun at Ellison during AWS' partner event. When showing a graph of worldwide cloud market share, an animation of Ellison poked its head up in various places.
"Some providers don't have enough revenue to show up here, and they only get attention when they pop their heads up themselves," Jassy quipped.
Verdict: They don't come much bigger than AWS and Oracle, and the animation of Ellison's head darting around the screen was very amusing. The industry is perhaps desensitised to this one now, though
Handbags rating:7/10
Top five vendor-on-vendor dust-ups
After Nutanix's and VMware's public fallout over marketing campaigns and emails, CRN picks our favourite examples of vendors getting catty
Cylance vs Sophos (with a reseller caught in the middle)
Well-funded tech start-ups often possess a healthy marketing kitty that allows them to jibe at the competition and get noticed. Cylance however was louder than most, trash-talking almost every legacy cybersecurity vendor to anyone who would listen.
Cylance targeted Sophos, Trend Micro and Symantec in particular, branding them "dinosaurs in the tar pit".
On one particular occasion, a reseller found itself caught in the middle, when Sophos published a video with the partner showing its own product outperforming Cylance's.
In a blog post, Cylance said that legacy vendors had started to "come after" them with "pitchforks".
The vendor slammed the test's credibility and said Sophos had resorted to "dirty tactics" and was using a partner to "wage war" - accusing it of procuring Cylance's product from a "rogue employee" at the reseller.
In its defence, Sophos said that it had carried out the test because Cylance refused to take part in third-party tests.
Sophos removed the video, claiming to have done so only because Cylance had threatened the channel partner involved with legal action - not because it doubted the outcome of its test.
Sophos said that Cylance had been staging "well-choreographed" tests of its own in public in which its products received near-perfect scores and the competition performed poorly.
Verdict: Cybersecurity vendors are not averse to trashing each other, particularly when it comes to product testing. This however scores well for having a reseller caught in between the squabbling pair
Handbags rating: 8/10
Top five vendor-on-vendor dust-ups
After Nutanix's and VMware's public fallout over marketing campaigns and emails, CRN picks our favourite examples of vendors getting catty
VMware vs Nutanix
VMware and Nutanix clashed at the start of this year, after VMware COO Sanjay Poonen took exception to a Nutanix marketing campaign.
Nutanix launched a campaign encouraging customers to "say no to vTAX", which read as a direct attack on VMware. The term has previously been used to describe charges imposed by the virtualisation vendor.
What came next, Nutanix says, is a threatening LinkedIn message from VMware COO Sanjay Poonen to a customer that is quoted as part of the campaign.
Stop being a bully, VMware: https://t.co/0zDidILBFm.
My musings @nutanix on what it takes to be constantly growing and evolving: being vulnerable!
— Dheeraj Pandey (@dheeraj) January 22, 2019
In a blog post, Nutanix CEO Dheeraj Pandey displayed a screenshot purportedly from Poonen, which states: "I wanted to let you know that your name and your companies [sic] brand is being used in a vitriolic anti-VMware and anti-Dell campaign by Nutanix.
"We totally respect that customers might pick different technologies, and maybe you prefer Nutanix for hyperconverged in your IT systems, and your partner practice, over VMware.
"Yet, I think you are still a VMware partner, and more importantly VMware is part of Dell Technologies, so this ad campaign is a frontal attack on both VMware and Dell."
Pandey took particular exception to one particular line of the email: "For one, this email is full of fear and prejudice, given the number of times he has used the word 'vitriolic' for our campaign that espouses a new way of life.
"Then he drags Dell into this for no good reason. This argument that No-VTAX is about Dell is as preposterous as saying that HPE, Lenovo, NEC, Fujitsu, Huawei, Inspur, and other competing server manufacturers should stop supporting VMware, now that Dell is an investor in VMware.
"But most alarmingly, the veiled threat - ‘we don't want it to affect your brand' - in this email is an act of bullying that has no place in a world where the customer is all powerful."
Verdict: Pandey clearly ruffled VMware's feathers, which was probably the intention, but things really jumped up a notch when Pandey posted Poonen's email - which he probably didn't see coming
Handbags rating: 9/10