Andy Jaquith had a good post up that I first heard about from Mike Rothman's blog. Andy, fresh off of attending the Symantec Vision conference laments the obligatory "we're so big" slides that find themselves into almost every deck you see. Whether it is for analysts as Andy says or for customers or partners, from the biggest to the smallest, companies seek to show how good they are by how big they are. Numbers of customers, nodes, sensors, yada, yada. Usually these "we're so big" slides are followed by the obligatory circular diagrams that show the "life cycle" of the companies product or services being complete. After a while you seen one, you've seen them all.

But lets face it, even some of you men out there who may be resisting, size does matter! No one wants to say that we don't have the scale and success breeds success. It is just a fact of marketing. You will feel more comfortable if you see so many others (even brands you know) picking the same solution you are looking at. You feel good knowing that your vendor has an army of machines and/or people watching your back. Sounds better than 3 guys in a garage for sure.

It is all part of the marketing game. Those same rules say that if you repeat a story enough times, whether it is true or not, eventually people believe it. The bigger the lie, the more times you repeat it, the more people will believe it. But that should not stop others from pointing out the facts and doing their best to call out those who just cross the line with marketing claims that are not true.

Here is another pet peeve of mine. Why do analysts base their market size numbers on what vendors tell them they do in revenue. With the past performance of some of these vendors, I wouldn't put much weight into what they say they do for revenue. I think analysts need to show market size independent of vendor revenue reports unless they are in fact audited or some how verified.