There’s a competitor of ours called Axxxx
They have a forum (if you hadn’t guessed already, you know who they are now)
One of the key rules on their forum is ‘no names of competitors’. So you’ll find references to us as Vxxxx. For example (from their forum): My reseller is close to dropping our service and switch to a vxxxx based solution because of these kinds of glitches. Please help.
You’ll also find references to some of the consumer backup services like Mxxx and Cxxxxxxxx (who is sometimes also referred to as Carb – in the fond hope that a reader will dismiss this reference as a discussion on the Atkins Diet)
Frankly, I find the whole thing rather childish and an insult to a Service Provider’s intelligence.
We run a forum too, but we leave it ‘open’ in the true spirit of the word. Sure, we’ve had our fair share of bouquets & brickbats….and positive & negative references to competitors’ products. They all make for a healthy discussion. And quite honestly, if you’re confident about your product, facilitating a free and open discussion is only to your advantage – in the long run!
So why this post, now? We’ve always had a quiet chuckle on Axxxx’s forum policies, but this recent post in response to Axxxx’s huge price rise really lowered the bar (notice the subtle irony)!
In the thread, there is a comment by a ‘thdrought’ wherein he says (grammar and typos are his own):
I am currently evaluating this software bring my clients online backups in-house. This is my second company I’m evaluating, and so far have no issues with this product. I’d like to get other Ahsay users comments on this product, and for the unhappy ones, maybe some reasons why you don’t like it.
As for other providers, I just warn to steer clear of V-e-m-b-u. I ran a trial of thier product for 1 week. Installation seemed easy enough, though all clients run a version of Apache web server. I thought this was very strange. Why are the backup clients needing to run Apache?
Not a single backup ever completed! Ever. Though the portal would say that they did. Weird… but I would get a failure email, followed by a sucess email and the portal always said “100% complete” on all those backups.
Then, the portal stopped working. Never could log back into it. A sales person from V-e-m-b-u called me, transferred me to technical support, which they “logged a ticket”, but never called me back. That was a week ago. I promptly uninstalled their portal, clients and made sure that the V-e-m-b-u directories were deleted from all.
If anyone else is looking at something else, please share, but even with the price increase, so far this product is looking better and better for a backup solution in this price range.
Now, that’s insulting. Not to us! We’re still laughing. It’s insulting to a service provider’s intelligence to assume that he won’t see through this hollow attempt by Axxxx to ‘doctor a conversation’. I’ll save the Sherlock Holmes post for a later date, but suffice to say that at least one other person thought the same and even mentioned so in the thread:
thdrought : I highly doubt you are a real person. You sound more like an Ahsay sales person trying to pretend to be a user.
Hungry for more XXX? Here’s another thread where their tech support replies saying:
May I ask what version of OBM are you currently using? Furthermore, may I ask if the machine in concern has “Shadow Protect” or “Sxxxxxxx Bxxxxx Exxx System Recovery” installed? If so, there is a Volume Shadow Copy conflict between the two software. Our development team has resolve the incompatibility issue. Could you please try patching your OBM to the latest version to see if the problem can be resolved?
(Note: Thanks to Symantec, Sxxxxxxxx is NOT StoreGrid)
Two tips before I sign off:
1) If you’re an Axxxx partner looking for better prospects, please click here. And be sure to ask your sales rep for the ex-Axxxx special.
2) If you’re planning on starting a backup software/service and want free publicity from your competition, call yourself Bxxxxx (yes, the URL is available)
The above post was written by Lakshmanan (Lux) Narayan of Vembu Technologies. Vembu Technologies is a backup software vendor whose product, StoreGrid, powers the online backup services of a large number of service providers across the globe. Besides remote backup, StoreGrid is also used for on premise backups of workstations and servers at various companies & universities.
Vembu Home is the only FREE consumer backup solution for free local backups and optional Amazon Cloud backups. Get your FREE COPY now.
