The point of a case study is to provide a venue in which one enterprise shares ideas, strategies, thought processes and potential gotchas with their IT peers in other organizations who can benefit from hearing about their experiences. To say that any case study "reads like an advertisement" for a given vendor demonstrates a lack of understanding about how trade press journalism works.

Generally, a case study profiles a particular IT or network project, which often centers around a particular vendor. Similarly, I've written case studies about organizations using any number of vendors' products over the years--wireless and otherwise--as have most trade journalists. This one happened to be about an Aerohive installation.

As for the newsworthiness of articles, breaking news is not my primary function as a NWW contributor. My articles, including case studies (which I try to write 1-2x per month) have really just one criterion: That they are of potential interest/benefit to someone in an IT department. By no means am I required to write "earth-shattering" articles in every column, to use your words.

That said, in my view, amid all the hype about pre-11n and the past five years' of vendors hyping their controller-based architectures, it seemed "balanced" at this juncture to write a story about an IT shop that is holding out for 11n standards and choosing a newer architecture that bucks the controller-based trend. I give all the vendors I talk to ample opportunity to provide me with interesting case studies (just ask 'em). The fact that many have difficulty coming up with such reference customers is a sign that 1) they don't have such stories to tell and/or 2) customers are shy about getting badmouthed in commentary like yours. Can you blame them?

In that spirit, I'd appreciate your being more professional in the future when referring to the customers who have expended their time and energy to tell me their stories. Feel free to aim your salvos at me, but please don't accuse my interviewees of being wrong or exaggerating: they chose what they did after much investigation and with sound reasons. In this case, it was to save a boatload of money and avoid the effect of WAN outages on branch users.

The WLAN market is extremely cutthroat, and I have no problem with you taking me to task on any mistakes I might make, which I will correct quickly. But please allow NWW to exercise is own newsworthiness judgement and please don't use the commentary section of this newsletter to promote your own marketing agenda. That goes for others of you, too, and you know who you are. Oh, and please include your name and company on your commentary. This section isn't meant to be an avenue for "anonymous" Wi-Fi vendors to trash their competitors.

Thanks for reading and writing. --Joanie