IT brands: a pulse check
September 17th, 2009 by Hugh Kennedy
In our very first survey of PJA’s new Global Online IT Panel, we turned up some interesting data about the state of IT decision-makers today.
To keep it simple, we asked only 3 questions: which technology brands do you love, which drive you nuts, and what’s your biggest IT challenge today? This post will cover the first two questions, and a follow-on post the third question.
Although only directional (our panel is just moving off the launch pad with three dozen members), the data are still pretty fascinating.
A few themes rise out of the results:
1. Big IT brands, while admired for depth of features, often get dinged for losing their way, for charging too much and for careless, sloppy customer service.
2. Smaller IT brands (perhaps we should call them pre-acquisition) often generate amazement and admiration for their vision, attitude, service, and ability to deliver as promised.
3. Open Source IT continues to bubble up as the next wave and the natural evolution of proprietary software. To quote one Honduran support consultant (for Oracle, no less): “From OS to office tools, from antivirus to Web browsers, open source and open standards are the future of IT, and changes the vision from a tool sell to a service and personalization of that tool, which is pretty cool.”
Now for a little detail:
IT brands that IT loves:
Apple is frequently called out for its “persistent innovation,” the fact that its products are “reliable and user-friendly,” and as a company that “provides a goal we should all aim for in simplicity and interoperability and cool hardware.” Ah yes, the aspirational power of a strong brand…
Dell gets the nod for being “reliable and affordable,” “reliable and easy to support,” and for “excellent support and good performance.”
Novell “provides so many enterprise products” and RedHat brings together a great “culture, community and product offerings.” Oracle is “reliable and keeps adding features just as we need them” and “really seem to have their act together,” while with SAP “the information-sharing possibilities are amazing.” And as for Linux, which IT brand wouldn’t strive for this response from a UK manager of IT operations: Just love 
IT brands that drive IT crazy:
No big surprises here, either: SAP and Oracle are “complex to implement” and Cognos has a “lot of bugs.” Neither is it shocking that the majority of the vitriol is directed at (wait for it) Microsoft: “does so many stupid things,” “so proprietary and self-centered,” “so many errors,” “too many costly mistakes, and almost impossible to ignore,” “complex licensing and configuration,” “virsues,” “world domination leading to arrogance and complexity,” and my favorite, “enough said.”
Although not a BtoB brand, Sony is buffeted by complaints of “poor quality” and being “under-engineered and over-priced,” while HP takes hits for “reliability, build, support,” “prices,” and especially customer service, which is called “impossible” because “they make changes so often and don’t support older equipment.” And in a reminder of how hard old brands die, one IT development manager still calls HP out eight years later for “taking over Compaq and killing the competition.”
Most opinions, of course, are mixed. My favorite in the Damning with Faint Praise department is one Web application developer’s opinion of IBM: “Occasionally the best, often the worst, usually the most expensive.” Sounds like a lot of brands I know…
