Seth Grimes has a blog post sighing that companies with good technology can have business problems, making it a bad idea to buy their products. The post refers to unnamed "Company X" and "Company Y." Seth conceals the names so as not to embarrass the companies in question.
However, it's pretty clear which outfits he means. Company X is surely Lexalytics, a well-regarded small vendor of sentiment analysis technology. Lexalytic's parent, Infonic, fits Seth's description in a couple of regards, such as deep financial difficulties and a recent large contract. Company Y is most likely ParAccel, a vendor of analytic DBMS that has generated much more in the way of favorable comment than actual sales.
And thus the question with which Seth starts the post
I've seen evidence that two software vendors I follow are facing business complications. Do I relate what I see, possibly adding to the difficulties faced by companies I'd like to see succeed, or do keep my views to myself?
becomes almost irrelevant -- in both cases, the financial difficulties Seth refers to are well-known. Search Google News on Infonic, and you'll get the news I linked above. Search Google's main index on ParAccel, and you'll get to two other posts I made about ParAccel, and from there to the one I linked earlier.
Now, I by no means want to suggest that all relevant information is easily available in public. Indeed, if you're considering a purchase of software, I absolutely think you should retain the services of a knowledgeable analyst/consultant such as Seth or myself. :) You may well need somebody like us to caution you about, for example, the hundreds of tuning options on ParAccel's system, that at least one former employee suggests quite defeat the ease-of-use goal of modern data warehouse DBMS. Or maybe not; after all, I just posted that and put it into the public domain. Hmm ...