Zerowait Corporation

Here’s a note that we received a few days ago from one of our long-term (13 years!) NetApp support customers:

At Zerowait our responsibility is to provide our customers with high reliability storage hardware and support. For over thirty years our team has been tinkering with computers and networks which has continuously broadened our knowledge of systems, software, firmware, and support. We practice what we preach and run SimplStor and NetApp storage in our own data center.

Last month I met with a customer at a university to talk about SimplStor.
One of the reasons he was thinking about switching vendors is that every time he calls his current vendor for a replacement part or tech support, he has to go through several layers of personnel before reaching a knowledgeable person who can actually take care of his issue. This generally happens because larger companies think of customer service and support as a cost. What they value is sales of new equipment. At Zerowait, we think the opposite. For us it’s all about helping customers.

We look forward to working with you. Please contact us at +1 302-996-9408 or by email at sales@zerowait.com.

We wrote our system log reader/reporter about 20 years ago and have been improving it ever since. The Exception Reporter is a key tool used by our engineers, and allows faster response time and more accurate diagnoses of issues. Its automated reports also help busy administrators quickly check the status of their NetApp and SimplStor systems. Many of the improvements to Exception Reporter arose from customer requests. One lesson we learned is the importance of documenting our programs, procedures, and changes, so as to keep track of what was requested to avoid mission creep. Delivering quality is delivering the solution the customer needs. Our goal is to help our clients avoid problems, but when they have a problem to provide a viable solution quickly.

We look forward to working with you. Please contact us at +1 302-996-9408 or by email at sales@zerowait.com.

Traveling to Charlotte, NC to visit a customer

In the 1990’s technology and standards were changing quickly, and our team developed and deployed networks that included load balancing and storage. Network Attached Storage (NAS) became our specialty and we deployed and supported NetApp equipment around the globe.

When the 2008 financial crisis occurred, our customers’ IT budgets shrunk dramatically, and our third-party NetApp support business grew. By 2010, we had become recognized as a leader in NetApp third party support with parts depots in the USA, Australia and the UK. At the same time, we started development of SimplStor storage products to provide a flexible, reliable, and scalable storage solution to our customers looking for an alternative to the costs of proprietary NetApp and EMC equipment. While some customers look at cloud solutions, many wanted to stay with on-premise storage for security, speed, and other business reasons.

And now here we are in the mid-2020s and the cloud seems costly and complex. For many dissatisfied cloud customers, the prize at the end of the rainbow is on-premise storage. The technology has evolved over the last 30 years, and Zerowait is still providing customers with affordable, scalable, and reliable network and storage solutions.

We look forward to working with you. Please contact us at +1 302-996-9408 or by email at sales@zerowait.com

Last year, for example, one of our customers asked us if we could help them track, by system, RMA tickets and part shipments. We knew that it would be helpful for us as well as the customer, so we started an R&D project and developed new programs and systems to track replacement parts from shipment through installation. Using SimplStor’s automated logs, our parsing engine pulls data from multiple sources within our operation to cross-check the details. It also notes delays with replacing defective parts and on the few occasions when parts were missing our new tool would help catch that sooner. This was especially helpful for our customers with multiple units across data centers worldwide.

Our SimplStor product line also came out of an R&D effort begun in 2009, when three customers asked for an open source solution for large archival storage. Back then SimplStor was designed to keep survey data for the Oil & Gas industry. Now via customization, along with our monitoring toolset, SimplStor storage solves many different use cases.

Zerowait’s R&D efforts provide our customers with innovative solutions to their storage management problems. Everyone on our engineering team works on R&D projects, and we have discovered many helpful strategies for our NetApp customers as well. Among these are our Exception Reporter monitoring products, which over the last 22 years has evolved into the backbone of our third-party NetApp service and support system.

I’ve heard folks mention that research and development can cost a lot of money. And I agree. On the other hand, our team feels that providing customers with accurate, actionable information to solve their problems is worth the investment.

We look forward to working with you. Please contact us at +1 302-996-9408 or by email at sales@zerowait.com.

This week has been extra busy for all of us, preparing transferable licensed NetApp Filers and custom-built SimplStor storage servers for new orders, and keeping up with trouble-tickets and ensuring timely replacement component shipments for our ZPA maintenance customers. Riley has learned a lot!

While many companies today are focused on adding artificial intelligence or machine automation to their customers’ service experience, at Zerowait we prefer a personal touch, and having a happy dog or two in the office seems to help our team provide the consistent high-quality service and support that high availability systems require.

We look forward to working with you. Please contact us at +1 302-996-9408 or by email at sales@zerowait.com.

Over 20 years providing NetApp Service and Support 

The foundations of Zerowait are anchored in what I consider the three things that are required for a successful business:

1) Focus on the niche.
2) Provide customers with affordable, dependable solutions.
3) Find ways to improve the delivered quality of service and products.

Last month while I was in Nebraska visiting with a customer, he mentioned that no matter who he is working with at Zerowait he always gets the correct answer. I told him that when we hire new employees, we look for the best qualified people who are also looking to learn. Because we strive for excellence, we have consistently improved our documentation, and that makes it easier for our procedures to evolve and improve our customer service and support.

If you are looking for outstanding NetApp third-party support, a semi-custom SimplStor storage solution that will meet your current requirements and provide long-term reliability, or excellent technical support for data storage you can depend on Zerowait.

Our goal is to solve your problem before it goes critical. Our customers know that they can depend on Zerowait to solve the problem before calling in the forensics team.

We look forward to working with you. Please contact us at +1 302-996-9408 or by email at sales@zerowait.com.

Last month, I was speaking to a Canadian customer about his NetApp technical support requirements, and he mentioned that the OEM’s support seems to be in decline. He also said that the well-known organization that he uses for his network support can take a week to get back to him. Yikes.

Unfortunately, we’re all experiencing something similar. Even consumer sales support is getting worse. For example, recently I tried to order a second pair of eyeglass lenses from an online company in New York that I have used in the past–the last time less than two weeks ago. I put the order in, paid online, and almost immediately received an automated request for my prescription—i.e., the one I had sent them a couple of weeks ago. They will not answer their phone or respond to emails asking them to simply duplicate the last order. Instead, a few hours later I received an automated email that they are going to cancel my order. This was after I mailed my old frames to them for the new lenses to be made and fit.

At Zerowait, we make sure we answer our phones and respond to emails and texts from customers and prospects. We grew our business by focusing on a small niche and providing responsive, well-thought-out answers to our customers’ questions, thus solving their technical issues and providing good value with our NetApp and SimplStor hardware solutions and support.

If you need excellent technical support for storage hardware I hope you will give us a try. Our goal is to solve your problem, and I hope we can demonstrate why so many of our customers are still working with us for a decade or more after their first call.

We are looking forward to working with you. Please contact us at +1 302-996-9408 or by email at sales@zerowait.com.