The Small Business perspective and a Goliath’s

Last night I was reading the Wall Street Journal of June 6th 2006, and on page B5 there is an article by Gwendolyn Bounds about how an independent radio station in Philadelphia maintains its market leadership under private ownership. The article ends with this statement by the station’s owner ‘ Whenever there’s a decision to be made, I ask myself two questions: “will I make money in the next 12 months?’ and ” will I make money in 5 years?” ‘ In the spirit of someone without public shareholders to consider, Mr Lee adds ” The five-year one is the only one that matters” 🙂

While I was in Tampa last week I got into a discussion about how a small business like Zerowait can compete against a large leviathan like NetApp for service and support of Legacy NetApp equipment. I tried to explain that because we are small means that we can discuss tactical and strategic ideas between our departments and make decisions quickly based on our customer’s requests and emerging requirements. But the reality is much simpler, ask your NetApp, Hitachi, or EMC salesman and management what their five year expectation is for his employment and the duty cycle of their products. Then call Zerowait and compare the answer, Zerowait is always working toward the strategic five year time frame, while most Enterprise storage manufacturers are looking at the quarterly sales figures.

Mr Lee summed up my thoughts beautifully on our business.