You can’t make this up…. it seems that NetApp and another partner are not getting along. Is there a pattern here?

When things were good
Lowell, Mass. – November 21, 2005 — Acopia Networks, the innovator of Adaptive Resource Networking, today announced that it has joined the NetApp Partner Program to provide tighter integration of Acopia’s award winning ARX products with NetApp enterprise storage systems. Acopia’s products simplify the management and increase the utilization of today’s file storage systems, thereby reducing total cost of ownership (TCO).

Now things are bad
The EMC NAS group views the world the same way that Network Appliance does. They view Acopia as the Antichrist because for them we’re creating a heterogeneous abstraction. They’re not used to that in the storage world. Cisco may have a dominant position in networking but there are hundreds of companies that exist in that ecosystem.

I wonder what happened to the beautiful relationship to cause such strife? They seemed so happy together.

“The NetApp Partner Program is dedicated to providing customers with partner solutions that are tested to work with NetApp storage, simplifying both deployment and management,” said Patrick Rogers, Vice President of Products and Partners at Network Appliance. “As a member of the NetApp Partner Program, Acopia is providing easy and affordable transparent data migration across storage systems for improved utilization and tiering of storage.”

“As the pioneer and leader in the NAS virtualization space, Acopia is excited to work more closely with the leader in unified storage solutions,” said Christopher P. Lynch, CEO of Acopia. “We believe that as a member of the NetApp Partner Program, we will be able to provide customers with products and solutions that improve the scalability of their existing infrastructure, while enabling them to simplify the management of their storage resources.”

What ever happened to those Long Term Strategic relationships?

“We’ve always focused on building long-term partner relationships based on trust and integrity,” says Leonard Iventosch, vice president of Americas channel sales at NetApp. “This recognition validates the VIP Program and the resellers that have chosen NetApp as their strategic partner.”

Acopia’s CEO should not be upset – NetApp has a problem with long term commitments, move on Acopia, you will find someone new and so will NetApp .
I did not get a Christmas card this year from [Network Appliance President] Tom Mendoza or [CEO] Dan Warmenhoven, or [EMC CEO and President] Joe Tucci for that matter.

Dave, Dan and Tom did not send Zerowait a card either, but that is okay – A lot of customers did!