It is possible to fly without motors, but not without knowledge and skill – Wilbur Wright
Just as Orville and Wilbur found out, if you study the fundementals you will learn that the common knowledge is often misleading or just plain wrong.
Almost on a daily basis we get calls from NetApp customers who have been misled by NetApp’s sales folks or some NetApp broker or dealer about the equipment they have or as to whether it can be upgraded or serviced by a company other than NetApp. The common refrain from NetApp’s folks is that there is no such thing as a transferable license or that you can’t upgrade systems to use different shelves and drives.
At Zerowait we are specialists in NetApp equipment, according to our customers we provide better service and support than the manufacturer does, and that is not just for legacy equipment. NetApp’s customers are learning that our Affordable Alternative to NetApp for service and support means that when they do upgrade we can help them save money. Recently there has been a thread on the NetApp newsgroup explaining how you can save money by playing IBM against NetApp for competitive quotes on the same equipment and software. From a negotiating strategy this is a great way to save serious money for a customer.
A recent posting on the newsgroup included the following:
From what I hear IBM is cutting the prices dramatically.
It is an interesting business strategy for IBM, they have put themselves in the reseller business for NetApp and are winning deals by cutting price. This means that their margins must be razor thin on a lot of these sales they are making. I never thought I would see IBM’s sales force in the business of cutting prices to win any business they can. They used to be the gold standard. We are in interesting times as the year comes to a close .
But savvy customers can use these strange times to their advantage, NetApp makes great equipment and software – it is just way overpriced. But if you buy it from Zerowait you get all the advantages of NetApp equipment, and software with transferable licenses – at a fraction of the cost. And with our Zerowait support you will save even more – and have access to the best technical support for NetApp equipment.
