Another Early Adopter gets rid of their NetApp .

August 17, 2006 — NASA’s Solar Data Analysis Center is changing out its network attached storage (NAS) from Network Appliance Inc. for what it described as a more agile set of arrays from Pillar Data Systems Inc. to make it easier for the organization to study the sun.

If only that this NASA division had called us, we could have helped them grow their NetApp Storage, shrunk their footprint, and improved their performance without breaking their budget. And maybe saved the taxpayers some money!

Pillar’s sales force seems to be doing the missionary sales work and chasing after the early adopters of storage technologies. NetApp uncovered a market need in the mid 1990’s, but are they nimble enough to recognize, implement and execute on a plan to fight this hungry and well financed newcomer to the marketplace? Perhaps their StoreVault product is a distraction from their main business, have they lost focus already? But NetApp does not seem to be addressing Pillar directly yet. Oracle is a big NetApp customer but there are direct ties between Oracle and Pillar.

Recognizing that Zerowait has a rapidly growing North American and EMEA customer base some NetApp competitors have approached us to help them market their products recently. We have seen some really interesting and innovative technologies that will reduce customers overall cost of storage in the past couple of months. But we have not seen a value proposition yet that approaches what we can provide our customers yet on maintaining, upgrading and providing service and support for their NetApp equipment.