An Interview with Idera CEO, Rick Pleczko
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Comments posted to this topic are about the item An Interview with Idera CEO, Rick Pleczko
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Nice one Steve, I enjoyed that. Short, sweet, to the point and relevant. Also makes a change to the totally technical stuff that SSC specialies in (that's not a criticism though
)Would be good to read a few more of these as occasional articles, maybe once every few months, perhaps longer with more questions, and more in depth. Guess it would also do SQL Server Central a favour, as it would raise awareness of the site in the eyes of the vendors.
Just a thought for future interviews - how about approaching some big SQL Server users out there and ask them to comment on the technical challenges they face each day in high volume / size environments, ie : say Nestle, the NASDAQ or Dell ?
Jon -
"I think it’s a major inflection point" - It's good to see that Idera is being run by someone who has read 'Only The Paranoid Survive'.
It should be required reading for all business leaders, especially in the IT industry.
Malcolm (http://www.dbghost.com)
Malcolm
DB Ghost - Build, compare and synchronize from source control = Database Change Management for SQL Server
www.dbghost.com -
Great article Steve! The line of questioning was solid and I liked the fact that it was not just focused on their product line. I have been fortunate enough to have conversations with Rick in the past regarding futures of one of their products and was very impressed. They have a great vision, and a great commitment to providing very solid solutions to the SQL Server DBA community. I saw that again in your article and the answers to the questions.
Keep up the great work.
David
@SQLTentmaker“He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose” - Jim Elliot
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Thanks for the comments and I'll work on refining my interview skills as well as doing a few more.
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Steve,
Frankly, I found that interview to be a farce. Not on your part though. You asked very good questions... it's not your fault however that he gave you such BS answers. I have a lot of experience with Idera and Imceda both. Idera came into my company telling tons of lies about LiteSpeed. All they cared about was getting my business. They lied about the capabilities of their product (SQLSafe), and they lied about the capabilities of LiteSpeed. They also lied about the benchmarks they had performed. They told me that they outperform LiteSpeed hands down, and I put them in my lab at work, and LiteSpeed outperformed them several times over. I put them in my home lab and got the same results. A friend of mine at my previous company had the exact same experience with them. They lie to beat out their competition.
They are not the best product on the market. I've tested them against Yukon and I couldn't get it to work. I've tested them on a cluster and I couldn't get it to work. They are not multi-threaded. They cap the resources used so no matter how fast you want to backup or restore you're stuck with around 30% CPU and about 40% memory. This means that if I have a server down, I can restore up to 10x faster with LiteSpeed as I can with SQLSafe. There are so many things missing from their product I don't even know where to start.
And what's that garbage about DTx??? It's a dumbed down version of DTS for DBAs who just want to copy data real quick??? Can you say DTS Wizard??? Do they think we're stupid or something? Does anyone else think I'm being out of line here by expecting them to not just re-package what MS has already given us and charge us for it? And what's that about no company has ever pull off a successful multi-platform product??? Has he ever looked at the industry? What about Embarcadero DBArtisan, Quest Foglight, IBM Tivoli, just to name a few. I've seen their DTx program, and it's a complete joke. DTS Wizard is much better, and like you said, it's FREE!!!
Also, ask youself this question... look at their site... follow the link to 'Partners', and then goto 'Resellers'. Look at the first one... Edgewood Solutions. Go to the Edgewood Solutions site and look at the products they are resellers for. You see Idera listed there on top with 1 product... Diagnostic Manager. THAT's IT. Then, directly under that, you see Imceda, and a whitepaper on LiteSpeed ROI. Their own reseller won't even sell most of their products. Am I the only one who sees a problem with that?
Has anyone else compared the performance and resource usage of these SQLSafe and LiteSpeed? I'd like to hear what you think.
Michael
Watch my free SQL Server Tutorials at:
http://MidnightDBA.com
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Hi this is Greg Robidoux, founder of Edgewood Solutions. I just wanted to respond to the reference to our company in the prior posting. Edgewood does sell products for Idera, Imceda, Lumigent, sqlSentry, TimeSpring and Veritas. To conserve space we typically highlight only one product at a time per partner. Complete product offerings for all of our partners can be found on their corresponding partner pages.
Regards,
Greg Robidoux
Edgewood Solutions
http://www.edgewoodsolutions.com
Greg Robidoux
Edgewood Solutions
www.edgewoodsolutions.com -
We threw Idera out after 2 hours of presenting to ourselves. My management was disgusted at their attitude to other companies particularly Yohz backup, which we are trialing now. They couldn't even get their product working, in our demo and they wanted me to install .net framework on all my servers.
I like their SQL Check tool and their diagnostic manager, but that is about it. But on the rumour mill I understand that they recently got refused more funding, which has got to send alarm bells ringing. That should have been asked in the interview, this was just a marketing exercise for Idera, I wonder how much they paid for it.
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Declan, Michael,
I can't comment on your experiences of the companies involved as I've not personally had dealings with them or their products.
However, from a "usefulness to other DBAs and developers" point of view, do you think it's worth Steve persuing further interviews? If so, how would you improve the questioning? How would you filter out the BS answers from the straight ones? And would you want SQL Server Central
to publish anything that's not verbatim exactly what has been said in the interview ? At least one can make one's own judgement if we're given it as it's said without being censored.
Also, do you think the right people are being targetted? Should SQL Server Central be talking to the company founders, the managers, or the DBAs? Guess it's much harder to get interviews with the people who are "at the coal face", even though from our perspective it's much more interesting?
Given your reactions, is it feasible for SSC to run a poll of what people think of vendors?
(Steve, my apologies, I know this is a dual edged sword for you guys, as with any publication you have to strike an honest balance between advertisers and audience - I'm playing devil's advocate here).
Come on guys, suggestions for improvement!
Jon -
I found that Steve did an outstanding job interviewing Rick. The questions that were asked were solid and I think Rick's answers were honest. Everyone has their own opinions...
-M
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I'm not sure necessarily why this interview in particular inspired such vitriol. It seemed pretty innocuous to me. The posters didn't seem to necessarily cite anything about the interview but seemed more to use it as an excuse to vent against this particular vendor. Why a vendor presentation at your company would elicit such reaction is beyond me - they tend to make me sleepy - not angry.
interviewing people isn't so easy - so i give Steve Props. I tried to interview one of my guys and the effort has been soundly panned by everyone who read it. I guess this is why i write software and not content!
http://www.apexsql.com/blog/2005/06/interview-with-ashton-hobbs-apexsql.html
pls direct all flames to Ashton Hobbs and not me. his bs answers also ruined my great interview
Brian Lockwood
President
ApexSQL - SQL Developer Essentials
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