IDG: Another Unexpected Action
August 4, 2014
I received an email from IDG, owner of the mid tier consulting outfit IDC.
The most remarkable item in this marketing email was the offer for information about “Web Hosting: How to Break Free from Servers.” I clicked on the link and saw this title:
The information is a “white paper” with the title “Hosting Is Dead.” Now if I go to a car dealer with an ad for a car at a special price and the salesman says, “Oh, we don’t have that auto. I can sell you this higher priced auto” I get annoyed. Some folks would call this bait and switch. But the IDG “white paper” is offered for free, presumably by a company keen to get sales leads.
Well, I filled in the information, using one of my special accounts, and this is what I received after accepting the cookie from IDG:
So what’s the white paper after jumping through these hoops?
The white paper is 17 pages in length. The basic idea in the rather colorful white paper is that I should not purchase do it yourself hosting. The choice, the authors argue, is buy Pantheon.
There are “real” numbers backing up this assertion:
Well, sort of real numbers. There is not pricing for the Pantheon solution. I did some poking around and found this Web page on the Pantheon Web site at https://www.getpantheon.com/pricing:
I don’t want to misread this information so check it out yourself. I would point out that these questions flashed through my mind:
- Why not put the prices in the white paper? Why didn’t IDG present some “real” analysis in their email to me? Why did I come away from this clumsy marketing thinking, “Isn’t this a variation on the Schubmehl affair?”
- Isn’t it possible to use a similar service at a far lower price point via SquareSpace?
- What are the benefits of Drupal compared to Hippo CMS or a similar solution?
There is one important take away for me from this reading, clicking, and exploring. The notion that IDG and its units are delivering McKinsey- or Bain-grade information has been put to rest.
IDG is, in my mind, closer to the content marketing outfits trying to outguess Google.
This would be amusing if it were not such a large window into the ways in which IDG and its units are pursuing revenue by presenting sales silliness as high value information.
Oh, not a peep about the search functionality in Pantheon solution. Not surprising because I don’t see the difference among the hosting outfits that are “dead” and the approach suggested by Pantheon.
Stephen E Arnold, August 1, 2014
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