Dateline California

I have been in California the last few days visiting with NetApp service and support customers of ours. The first thing I notice when I come to California is that gas is about .50 a gallon more than in Delaware, and the traffic is incredible. Last night a bunch of old friends and I got together at the the steelhead brew pub in Burlingham. The crowd consisted of 3 former NetApp executives,a customer and myself. The beer was very good and the food was delicious. The conversation revolved around NetApp’s strategic direction, tactical moves and where technology was going.
After a while everyone agreed that there does not seem to be a true strategic direction at all, but more of a 24 months or less view of the storage marketplace. Everyone agreed with me that financially storage assets are depreciated over a 3 to 5 year period, so it odd that NetApp does not align itself withthe customer view of their product’s lifecycle.

Over a couple of hours we discussed many things and the parallels with SGI path since 1995 were astonishing. What is the strategic direction of NetApp? Does anyone know anymore?
For storage customers with critical data it is a prime concern, what happens if your proprietary storage vendor goes off course and you can’t depend on them anymore?

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