I’ve learned that mistakes can often be as good a teacher as success. Jack Welch Recognizing opportunities when they arise is relatively easy, creating and executing profitably on the opportunity is much more difficult. But the willingness to adjust your product and service offering to the requirements of your customer is often the best way to gain access to new customer opportunities. I asked a stock analyst this week why public companies often focus on market share rather than per unit profitability. The analyst said that the reason is that there is a disconnect between the shareholder’s value perception and the employee managers of the company.

It seems logical to me as the President of Zerowait that the best way for us to succeed is to satisfy our customers as completely as we can and therefore provide more value to our NetApp customers for their NetApp service and support dollar than NetApp does itself. Outstanding service and support for NetApp products is a tiny market niche, but we are focused on it. NetApp itself is focused on new product sales instead of service and support of installed product. Zerowait provides an affordable alternative to NetApp for service, support and upgrades of NetApp equipment. Hundreds of NetApp customers buy parts and service from us every year, and we expect to add to our customer base significantly again this year, because we are focused on customer support and the manufacturer is not.