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.”