OK, again with the backup wars... for those of you who have followed me for a long time you'll remember a few yrs ago I did a piece on Idera vs. Imceda. And this was for backup products, right... so SQLSafe vs. LiteSpeed. And IF you remember back that far you remember how heated the outcome was and the extremely poor rating I gave Idera in that roundup. I stood by it then, and I stand by it now. I just don't thi OK, again with the backup wars… for those of you who have followed me for a long time you’ll remember a few yrs ago I did a piece on Idera vs. Imceda. And this was for backup products, right… so SQLSafe vs. LiteSpeed. And IF you remember back that far you remember how heated the outcome was and the extremely poor rating I gave Idera in that roundup. I stood by it then, and I stand by it now. I just don’t think the product is enterprise-ready. It still has some serious problems that keep it from making the grade. But I’m really not here to bash on Idera. I do have a couple things to say about the new version of their Diagnostic Manager though, so maybe I’ll put something together sometime this week. Anyway though… getting off topic. Well, for once, I’m not the only one saying things about SQLSafe in public. And frankly I’m a little tired of being the only one sticking my neck out, but that’s another post. Here’s a link to a guy who is an avid supporter of Idera and actually chose their product and uses it every day for years now. Well, he just downloaded their new version, and I think you should see what he has to say before you take the leap yourself. Here’s his blog post. There are lots of thing I could say about this situation, but there’s really no need to. He says it far better than I ever could. Besides, I just semi-made-up with Janette at PASS and even though she isn’t returning my emails, I know she’ll eventually come around and realize she can’t live without me.One thing that hits me square in the face though, is how careful companies need to be these days. Perhaps this is the topic for a full post later, but I’ll touch on it here just because it’s relevant. Gone are the days when you can piss a customer off and just leave it at that. Ordinary people like me have full access to blogs now and we make full use of it. Think about that for a sec. This guy felt so wronged by the new product that he felt it necessary to blog about it to warn others against it. It sounds to me like you need to take all of your customers very seriously. Even if he’s a nobody and his blog is unpopular… he still made it to my blog roll so the word will get out somehow. And even if I didn’t pick this up, somebody else might have. And they may still. Someone may look at this blog and point to both of our blogs and now the story’s out there for everyone to see forever. So there really are no small customers anymore… just small testing depts. Databases