Round Two: Gokul Goes to School, Gets Beat Up
I guess I won Round One, because my opponent swapped fighters for Round Two. The overly loquacious and giggly Gokul Sriram opened with weak blows – personal insults, feigned misunderstanding, and challenging my claims and others’ with a lame analogy about milk. He closed even weaker, embarrassing himself by giggling into a fetal position. Gokul is just adorable! I reluctantly accept him as a student. I will do my best to school him.
You will have to go back to the beginning of this battle to catch up if you are just joining us. Vembu started it by posting an unprovoked attack on their blog at the above link. Here is their most recent attack, to which I am replying now.
Rob Cosgrove, CEO Remote Backup Systems
I don’t like calling people “idiot.” Personal attacks are bad form and bad Karma, especially for a CEO. Even responding to personal attacks, which I am going to do here, lowers me to the level of, well, Vembu, because I assume these personal attacks posted on Vembu’s blog are officially sanctioned, until I hear otherwise.
This is especially heinous when my opponent challenges my spiritual beliefs in public, making fun of the religious foundations of billions while admitting he knows nothing about it and then going to great lengths to prove this fact to us with sophomoric drivel.
Let’s hope Vembu changes fighters again for Round Three, because Gokul is not in the least entertaining. Anyway, it’s not appropriate for a General to skirmish with peons. If Vembu wants to stop sounding shrill and ill-informed, let them trot out the Big Guy, Sekar Vembu. We’ll handle this General to General, and maybe this will become more civilized.
OK, let’s get ready to rumble (yawn).
1. Gokul questioned, “But surely sir, it beats me why there should be pages and pages of RBS’s ill-conceived notions and baseless opinions on Vembu StoreGrid on your website.”
RETORT: REALLY? Does it really beat you? I’ll take you at your word. Let me school you, my student. It’s called a “competitive matrix.” This is where one company explains in detail why its product is better than another’s. You know, like how mine is better than yours! When prospective customers ask, “Hey, what’s the difference between your product and theirs,” a great company should be ready with an authoritative, in-depth answer, like RBS is and Vembu is not.
Your answer is, “Download our demo and compare them side by side.” What kind of answer is that? When a customer asks for some sales material, a company good at customer service gives it to her!
Our VERY comprehensive (you prefer the phrase “pages and pages“) comparison was commissioned at no small expense from three impartial software analysts, working separately, who were given instructions to be objective and fair. And, since we don’t consider your company a major competitor in our industry, we included far larger companies with greater market-share and better software like Ahsay, Novastor, Mozy, Carbonite, and our own Mercury. Our customers deserve proper competitive information. Don’t yours?
PLEASE send me your corrections to RBS’ product and company comparison! PLEASE! I want it to be objective. I spent a few thousand dollars on that matrix. I want it to be accurate. I have invited your company to communicate with me out in the open or in private – your choice. Here’s Vembu’s most recent response, emailed to me on 12 November 2009. It is in response to a message I left as a comment on one of your blog entries literally begging for someone to contact me after many un-answered emails.
Rob,
Thanks for your comment on our blog, and for reaching out.
While we agree with the sentiment of ‘keeping differences aside’, we wouldn’t wish to join any such discussion as:
a) We have our own plans, are doing quite well, and would not wish to be in a position where we inadvertently bring in elements of these ‘confidential matters’ into the discussion.
b) Since we are competing vendors serving similar segments, any discussion between us could be seen as an act of ‘collusion’ and can, independent of the nature of such discussion, possibly be (mis)construed as attempts towards some forms of cartelization. And quite simply, this wouldn’t be fair to the partner ecosystem.
Trust you understand.
Best regards
Lux
After this response, I decided that you guys were paranoid and isolationist, and I just gave up. You don’t want to communicate in a spirit of openness and objectivity. You would rather have underlings sling insults then run and hide. I suppose this little series of blog battles proves it. I hope your mother spanks you. Hey, Vembu started this, not me.
2. Goku vexed, “…it sounds suspiciously like a convenient excuse for keeping adverse partner comments ‘private and privileged’ or maybe that the forum is way too dull to be admitted publicly.”
RETORT: Here we go again – the closed forum issue. Didn’t we solve that yesterday? Let me explain it for you again. I’ll type slower for you this time. We call our Service Provider’s Forum the Service Provider’s Forum because it is for Service Providers, not the public. This probably isn’t an issue for Vembu, since your web site gets so much less traffic than mine, oh and then there’s that matter of my 8,400+ Service Providers to your little 1,500. At their request, we maintain a closed forum for our Service Providers so they aren’t barraged with questions about the business from the general public.
Your forum is RIDDLED with customer complaints – BITTER complaints. In addition, I have a LIBRARY of complaints about Vembu, going back as far as your short life. But all software companies get complaints. Likewise, I am quite sure your company has emails from my former customers complaining about me as bitterly as the ones I have from your former customers. Both of us also have plenty of forum posts and emails praising us. Why do you want to concentrate on the complaints?
The simple fact is that we don’t rely on our forum as much as you do for our day to day business. Our Service Providers pay to join our Forum. It contains downloadable utilities and software not available to the general public, announcements only for Service Providers, Alpha and Beta testing resources, links to our BugZilla, Sharepoint, and other in-house resources that even your company wouldn’t allow public. Is that enough of an explanation to put this issue to rest?
I think your reason for continuing to harp on this “closed forum” issue is that you need more dirt on RBS, and you think I’m hiding it in our forum. It’s not there, guys. Sorry. Maybe I’ll let one of you poke around in there for an hour or so just to satisfy your curiosity. Not you, though, Goku. You are not yet ready, my son. How DO you get your hair to defy gravity like that, anyway?
3. Gokul surmised, “Tee Hee… I have reason to believe somebody from RBS personally plagued our technical support and partner relations teams today.”
RETORT: This is where Gokul finally lost what little credibility he started with. He’s giggling about something he thinks he has discovered – a “secret” call, and a clandestine email – spy stuff! He is so cute.
GREAT BIG SHOUTING RETORT: OF COURSE I PHONED YOUR OFFICES AND FILED A SUPPORT CASE, IDIOT! I IDENTIFIED MYSELF BOTH TIMES! I TOLD YOU SO IN MY LAST BLOG ENTRY!
Stop wasting my time. Get up off the floor. Pull up your socks. My call and email were done to verify your support hours so I could correct my comparison page. Now you are just embarrassing yourself again.
4. Gokul misunderstood, “P.S. We value legal copyrights and have used only paid images in all of our marketing collateral including our blogs. Another example of jumping the gun in concluding something adverse on Vembu.”
RETORT: OMG, Gokul. I hope your complete lack of comprehension is not indicative of that of your company. I wasn’t blaming you for violating copyrights on the image. I was properly accusing you of the more serious infractions further down the page.
I don’t suppose you know this, and maybe it’s true that NOW you use only paid images; However, only a short few months ago “copyright” seemed to be a misunderstood term over there. Your blog contained copyrighted images reprinted without permission, and your company was busted for it, and they were removed.
And how about my accusation in my first response to your company’s current attack on my credibility? Nobody has answered that yet. Where did you get my private email? Did you, as you were accused (Check the un-posted comments to your first blog entry. One of them (not from me) is a real doozy!) violate privilege, lie about your associations, and steal private information from another closed forum? Given your distaste for closed forums, this seems highly likely.
POST FIGHT ANALYSIS
Wow, this blog entry got nastier than I really wanted it to. But, you have to admit, it was in response to vicious (but unskilled) personal attacks. It wasn’t very entertaining, and not very sporting, considering the youth and inexperience of my opponent.
I say again – bring on the Big Guy. If you want to go to a Round Three, toss me someone worthy of my time and position. Get Sekar Vembu in the ring. I’ve read his stuff. He’s far more civil and articulate than either of his minions so far, so I won’t feel compelled to beat up on him the way I’ve pummeled Gokul and Lenin.
Correct my published comparisons! I’ve already proven that I will verify, correct, and apologize in public. That’s a simple enough request, isn’t it? I’m not the Big Western Devil you think I am (But you may call me BWD if you like.) And while you’re correcting mine, send me yours to correct. I seem to remember a completely incorrect PDF file you email to customers who request a comparison, or was that Ahsay?
Here are the major points, as far as I can separate them from the nasty barbs:
- Vembu asserts that I am hiding something because my company supports a private forum for our customers, while Vembu supports a public forum. I adequately explained why.
- Vembu takes issue with the competitive research RBS has posted on our website. Yet they refuse to communicate with me to correct it, even though I have proven that I will gladly do so.
If these really are the only two points to all of this, I am left wondering why Vembu started this in the first place. Maybe the company is in trouble. Desperate, they wanted to drag my company down to their level. They were already on the ropes and I didn’t realize it until now.
Clearly I won this round, but reluctantly. I wasn’t given enough of a challenge. BRING ME SEKAR VEMBU!
Rob Cosgrove, CEO
Remote Backup Systems
(800) 519-7643 | (901) 405-1234 | FAX (901) 861-8075
London: 0207 993 2054 | Dublin: 016 571 749
http://remote-backup.com
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The company and product names used in this article are Service Marks or Registered Trademarks of their respective owners.
Rob Cosgrove is the President of Remote Backup Systems and founder of the Online Backup Industry.