Dave Hitz discounts from NetApp. Dave Hitz, cofounder and head of engineering at NetApp. “We have a single software system, and we can cut our prices to gain market share,” he says.

Tuesday was an interesting day. It seems that many customers are starting to receive their lower price quotes from NetApp’s direct sales force and resellers.

We had one customer call us from Toronto who was getting 30% discounts on his NetApp FAS 270 hardware and software, but only getting15% discounts on his support. We had another customer call us that was getting 50% discounts on his hardware and software but also getting a 30% discount on his 3 year support. This confirms what I heard last week from a client in Maryland who was getting 30% discounts on hardware and 15% discounts on support. Another customer in California was able to get NetApp to meet our prices on hardware last week! So, if you are looking to get a price reduction from NetApp, it can’t hurt to show them our Zerowait quote as part of your negotiation process.

NetApp typically aggressively discounts hardware and software at the end of their fiscal quarter or the end of their fiscal year. But it seems that savvy customers can get steep discounts from NetApp now by using a variety of negotiation tactics. Please give us a call if you need some help with learning the ins and outs of NetApp’s negotiation process or need a competitive quote for your NetApp storage.

If enough of you send us your NetApp quotes we can put together a database of their quotes and see if there are regional price differences as well as product line price differences. It could be a very interesting database and provide a great negotiation tool for NetApp customers.