LAS VEGAS — It’s uncanny how competing companies seem to know all about each other’s product launches, despite the cloaks of supposed secrecy under which they try to hide.
Not all the time, but now and then The Station will get notice of a new product release from a competitor before the issuing company or its PR firm clues me in.
Usually the competitor wants to explain that no matter what the new-product company releases, its own solution is already better, and “here’s why.”
It also happens frequently that companies come out with competing products at the same time, or close to the same time. This is what happened with EMC and NetApp on May 9.
The two sworn storage enemies both announced their Hadoop deployments on that day, mere minutes apart.
The perception was that NetApp was trying to steal some of EMC’s thunder on the opening day of its big annual conference, EMC World.
That they were going to make these announcements was hardly a surprise, but to have them come out on the same morning was a clear case of coopetitive collusion — if there is such a term.
If there in fact is not such a term, well, there is now. Deal with it.
