No Milestone, Please Not Coupons

Sigh.

After Milestone boasted of adding more storage to their boxes, it could not get any sadder.

Yet it has.

Milestone sent out a "Special Bulletin" for ISC West, trumpeting:

"Don’t miss your chance at receiving an in-show promotion coupon for a more than 50% discount on the Milestone Husky M10! Visit the Milestone booth #20060."

And the Husky M10 next generation platform will now have a 2TB hard drive, double the previous version.

First, industry people are very interested in Milestone overall, so Milestone should not need to resort to this. Throwing out 50% coupons is not what market 'leaders' do.

Second, how many people are going to come because of a coupon? Are those high-quality prospects that will pay for Milestone's premium-priced offerings?

Third, does Milestone not have any real innovation or substance to draw people to their booth?

Fourth, what does this say for Milestone's hardware line Husky? Does Milestone have so little confidence in its differentiation, that they just said, "Let's just give them half off coupons." On the other hand, very little differentiation does exist with Husky hardware.

The once open platform 'software only' provider is now banking on future growth from a commodity hardware line. At that point, perhaps the answer is coupons.