The determination to maintain an independent lab that could test and evaluate every
conceivable microcomputer-based IT product has been melded into the Ziff Davis
DNA since the early years of PC Week, the predecessor of eWEEK.
Free from the
influence of product vendors and industry spin doctors, eWEEK’s Labs analysts
cut through the market hype with detailed reviews of product features and
performance to help enterprise IT managers and technology professionals judge
whether products are worthy of their attention.
The product
reviews of eWEEK Labs have always been the technical bulwark of our print
edition. With the rise of the internet, eWEEK Labs became an integral part of
the of eWEEK.com, providing reality checks on everything from Web servers to
search engines to cloud computing applications.
Now to
reinforce the historic importance of an independent product testing facility
supporting our news coverage of the latest IT technology, Ziff Davis Enterprise
is announcing that eWEEK Labs has its own home on the Web at http://labs.eweek.com.
“For the
past two decades, Labs has been providing independent, expert reviews of
enterprise IT products. The new eWEEK Labs
site will integrate that expertise with the real-world insight of
enterprise IT professionals, said Debra Donston, eWEEK’s director of audience recruitment.
The site will also provide “a unique community where IT decision makers can get
the peer-reviewed information they need to select the best solutions for their
companies."
Ziff Davis
Enterprise CEO Steve Weitzner said that creating a vibrant community where IT
professionals can compare notes and share ideas was a major incentive for
creating eWEEK Labs. “eWEEK Labs offers IT
professionals the chance to look at the product specifications of scores of
enterprise-class solutions. More importantly, though, they can write reviews of
these products and read what their peers have to say about the best-in-class IT
products and learn how other IT pros use this technology in their day-to-day
work lives," Weitzner said.
Jason
Brooks, eWEEK Labs managing editor, said
the new site will provide an expansive new showcase for product views and
technical analyses. “Between all the interesting products we're pitched and all
the innovative stuff we come across, there have always been a ton of
interesting items that we haven't been able to include in eWEEK print or
online,” Brook said.
“Also,
no matter how much trouble we take to evaluate products in the lab in
"real world" scenarios, there's really no substitute for learning
about how IT administrators experience these products in their environments.
We've done Labs On-Site stories, and case study interviews, and we get a lot of
great reader mail, but again, we haven't had a good way to access the bulk of
what's out there.
“My
hope is that the labs site will give us a way to get beyond these long standing
limitations by giving us a way to share more of the product pitches we come
across with our readers, and that it'll give our readers a way to share more of
what they're finding in their own product evaluations with us. I'm looking
forward to getting more feedback from our readers about where we should focus
our efforts."
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