Upcoming - Independent Application Acceleration White Paper.
We got an email today from a well known testing company that was an offer to pay to participate in an what will be positioned in the market as an independent white paper about testing Application Acceleration solutions.
Here are some excerpts from the email inviting us to participate (I've removed the company's name):
_______ represents a perfect opportunity for technology suppliers to convey their market message through the industrys leading independent voice. The ________ white paper will be viewed as a valuable piece of collateral because it will present balanced, fair and accurate information on application acceleration.
That's precisely what _______ white papers deliver: Focused, independent assessments on the key issues in benchmarking new technologies, like application acceleration. There are a multitude of solutions in the application acceleration space already; users need an educational tool such as _______ to help them understand the differences and the benefits.
If you pay to play, [my comment]
- Company representatives are interviewed and quoted within the white paper
- Company is identified as a key player in the application acceleration systems
- Technology suppliers who participate in _______ will be regarded as true industry leaders, while those application acceleration companies that bypass the opportunity could well be seen as second-tier players.
If you pay to participate, you are listed as a key player in their report. If you chose not to participate, you could be omitted or positioned as a second tier player.
While the white paper may wind up containing some good information, it certainly does not look like it is lining up to be fair and balanced. This sort of stuff happens all the time. The fact that firms will ask you to pay to be in a report doesn't bug me. The fact that these reports rarely disclose the pay to play nature does bug me.
We decided not to play in this case. If you were in F5's shoes, what would you do?