Friday, April 06, 2007

The enemy of my enemy is...

...my friend!

Yesterday, I enjoyed a very nice lunch with Barry Crist who is the CEO of Centeris. Barry gave me a call to invite me out for lunch and since I work down the road from him it was an easy invite to accept.

I've been around long enough to appreciate having competitors but one of the reasons I like competition is because of the marketing multiplier effect. What do I mean by that? When Vintela first shipped commercial product we were the first vendor in the Unix/Linux/Active Directory integration market. We were the sole voice pitching the benefits of integrating with Unix and Linux with Active Directory. By having Barry out there pitching a similiar message I'm benefiting from his efforts. Barry is also benefiting from Quest's marketing efforts. So it's a win-win for both of us.

We also had the opportunity to talk frankly about areas where we competebut also areas where we don't compete and how we might be able to work together in a few of these "adjacent" areas. We parted ways with a mutual promise to get together to discuss these areas in more detail. I hope we do.

Thanks for picking up the tab Barry and don't forget our bet...!

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