My week in the United Kingdom was very interesting. The problems customers there have when dealing with NetApp on data migrations, upgrades and licensing are very similar to those that are experienced by NetApp customers in the USA. The customers we met with had all thought that NetApp had a monopolist’s hold on parts, support and upgrades until the started working with Zerowait. One customer we met with checked with NetApp about transferable licensed filers, and much to the chagrin of his NetApp sales person found out that everything that we had been telling about transferable licensing was absolutely true.

Since most of Zerowait’s business is the support of NetApp legacy equipment, which they no longer support we can’t understand why they view us as competition. It was obvious to almost everyone I spoke with that NetApp makes money on Software support even if we provide the end user with hardware support. But NetApp is in the business of selling new disk drives, not maintaining support on older equipment or making older equipment more efficient. NetApp salesman on not paid commission on storage or energy efficiency but on selling more and bigger storage arrays.

When NetApp talks about how green they are, is it a statement of their salesman’s commission check, their customers budget savings, or how much energy they are saving with their new storage solution?