Zerowait Corporation

Over the last few months the Zerowait‘s customers have been telling us that their budgets are uncertain and that they would be putting off new equipment purchases for a while.  There seems to be an inverse  correlation between the growth of our NetApp legacy support business and the reported drop in USA manufacturing activity.

July 2, 2012  http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304211804577502543898983040.html

By KATHLEEN MADIGAN

The U.S. manufacturing sector contracted in June for the first time since July 2009 as new demand crashed, according to data released Monday by the Institute for Supply Management.

The ISM’s manufacturing purchasing managers’ index plunged to 49.7 last month from 53.5 in May. A reading above 50 indicates expanding activity.

As Business and Economic uncertainty increases, more customers are seeking a reliable and dependable source for affordable enterprise storage support and upgrades. Zerowait has been providing high availability service and support to NetApp users for over a decade and we have grown into an international company through the recommendation and referrals of our customers.

The caution lights are on, and CFO’s are putting storage budgets on hold. That means affordable alternatives must be found and Zerowait is  the logical choice for many customer looking for a safe harbor in these unpredictable times.

If you are in a quandary, and trying to work through your puzzling budget process, why not consider a Zerowait support alternative for your NetApp equipment?  Zerowait has the answer.

Multi Billion Dollar storage vendors fear the evolution of generic storage solutions which seem to be growing more robust and reliable monthly.  If your company is locked into a storage vendor’s feature sets and they are making an effort to force you to upgrade, what affordable choices are available that can meet your growing storage needs when there is no more budget for additional resources?

The first option that comes to mind was touched on in last week’s blog.  If your budget is tight and you are locked into your vendor’s feature sets, why not purchase the Vendor’s off lease equipment? This equipment has been expertly maintained by the Vendor as part of their lease agreements and is certified by the vendor for installation and resale. This is a simple, obvious, and affordable solution embraced by Zerowait’s customers around the world.

The second option is to look into creating tiers of storage based on your company’s own usage patterns. Almost every study agrees that well below 25% of storage is first tier data required to be on high availability storage. Additionally, the studies show that most data is rarely accessed after the first 90 days. That is why a lot of companies migrate data based on date of last access to a secondary storage array. There are multiple software programs to do this and many techniques have been around for decades. Implementation is easy, the cost of secondary storage is affordable as storage requirements grow, and organizations are quickly recognizing the value of storage tiers.

While these two options seem to cover most of our customers’ needs, occasionally we have a customer who has a different need. Last week I wrote about the battle for storage value, and coincidentally this week we heard from a customer of ours that wants a substantial number of our SimplStor units for a very specific task in their field offices to transmit data to their central data facilities. They have many field data collection points, and the data is increasingly valuable as it is aggregated with other data. Field collection can be on affordable, high reliability SimplStor servers. The data on the SimplStor equipment will then be aggregated onto off lease high availability NetApp equipment, which is affordable, in stock, and easily expandable. And when that data is used for modeling it will be uploaded to the latest generation NetApp filers, direct from the manufacturer, for optimum performance.

Our customer is right; he understood his data assets and values and saw that by turning the typical data storage model around a bit he can save his company hundreds of thousands of dollars.  This is another example of why it pays to listen to what our customers have to say.

The Battles of Storage Features are mostly over; the Battles for Storage Value have begun.

Over the last few months the stock market has marked a steady decline in NetApp’s market valuation and there are rumors again about NetApp being acquired. While EMC and NetApp fight over market share, storage administrators are looking for ways to squeeze value out of their already existing storage infrastructures. Our customers are asking us for creative ways to add storage to their infrastructures so they can put off buying new equipment.

In this age of storage budget austerity a sudden surge in storage requirements for a new application or database could disable a stable storage infrastructure. Despite the strengths of a well-designed storage infrastructure – a solid operating system, a creative and savvy team of Network and Storage administrators – things could get very ugly very fast in the data center. Nobody wants to be the on-call engineer when the last bit of unassigned storage is used up. Experienced Storage and  Network engineers don’t define ‘professionalism’ as being unprepared; they look for reliable and affordable solutions which they can depend on when the storage hits the fan.

But if an available storage crisis is easy to imagine, a solution to the crisis is harder to see if your team is myopic and can only see the solutions offered by the big storage providers. Many large companies’ storage infrastructures are so big and complex that the simple and obvious solutions are often overlooked.

One of the easiest solutions to implement are off-lease systems of legacy equipment from the big storage providers that are plug and play and certified by the manufacturer. They’ve been expertly maintained by the manufacturer and are guaranteed to work in your current storage environment. Additionally, there are Open Source High Reliability mass storage solutions available that make migrating secondary storage assets easy and affordable.

Another aspect of Storage Value is extended support. Big storage manufacturers have been blackmailing their customers with their “End of Life.” product announcement threats. They play chicken, hoping that their customers are so frightened by their threat to end support of older systems that they win sales of their newer equipment. But independent support companies provide an alternative to the forced upgrade, with many offering global service, support, and monitoring. A few of these companies have been providing high availability support services for over a decade to the largest companies and government agencies and have a reputation for excellence that surpasses the OEM’s. Many companies now view the OEM’s EOL threats as the shouts of a spoiled child who has lost his advantage to the new kid in town.

Smaller companies and organizations charted the path to independent legacy support years ago because their budgets were already tight and they were not as attractive to the sales team of the big storage OEM’s. But as the world economy encounters more headwinds caused by economic uncertainties bigger organizations are looking for credible storage alternatives. Since the larger companies are staffed with great negotiators who know how to play game, they often will allow an independent service organization into their data center to keep the OEM honest. But as budgetary austerity kicks into high gear the independent storage support provider can provide better and more cost effective service and support than the manufacturer can. The OEM’s now face global competition for their service and support by entrepreneurial and nimble organizations dedicated to outstanding service and support in their chosen niches.

Enterprise Storage manufacturers use the threat of an “End of Life “announcement to induce an unwarranted fear of storage infrastructure collapse within their customers. And in a growing economy with storage budgets in abundance the threats can often drive an organization to make the decision to upgrade to the latest and greatest equipment available. But times have changed, and reliable alternatives exist. The new austerity will likely cause a review of storage assets and upgrade paths. And the best run companies will recognize that maintaining and expanding the reliable equipment they have is much more affordable than the costs involved with buying new equipment and enduring another expensive and lengthy data migration.

The Battle for storage value is already under way. And Zerowait is growing.

Over the last week Zerowait held our Global Conference near Dallas,TX and we also had one of our customer training classes. It has been a great week!

Some more shots from the NetApp training class:

This week we had a conference call with an old customer that has moved on to a new company and  he told his new team about Zerowait and the outstanding service and support we provide to our NetApp  support customers. Suddenly there is a need for additional storage, and budget is tight at his new company so he recommended that it was time to call Zerowait.  Our  customer recognizes that high availability storage can provide years of service beyond the OEM’s End of Life, when you have a reliable service and support organization like Zerowait in your court.  The conversation went well, and it looks like we have added another customer to our list.

Building a global service company that provides individual attention to all of our customers has taken a long time, and the foundation of this company is a great staff that provides honest and dependable service and support that our global customers require.   Folks often ask me how we built a global company and found the business niche.  The truth is that it was our customers who asked us to help them, and by helping folks and treating them right the business grew one step at a time.  Our customers suggested that we build and productize our SimplStor product line. We did, and it is growing steadily in the Energy and Video FX market sectors.

We spoke to many people before we opened up in Europe and we were told that it was nearly impossible to run our type of company there.  We have been in Europe since 2006, and it is a great place to have a business.  When our customers asked us to open up in Australia, we were told by many people that it was too far away and you can’t be successful there.  Our Australian business has grown nicely and we are working on expansion in the region now.

A small business can make a big difference in the world but you need to keep a positive outlook.  As Mark Twain said “Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you can become great.”  At the end of the month we are having our first Global Sales Conference in Dallas, TX. At the same time some of our customers will be in a training class during the conference. The class was scheduled at the suggestion of our customers.

Zerowait Training Helps NetApp Customers Reduce Storage Costs

Zerowait’s NetApp training class gives storage administrators the tools they need to optimize NetApp legacy equipment reducing the need for expensive system upgrades

When a student leaves our class they have targeted skills and knowledge that they can apply to their NetApp infrastructures.

Wilmington DE & Dallas, TX (PRWEB) May 16, 2012

As NetApp’s data storage solutions become more expensive, IT Departments are increasingly seeking to lower cost of ownership and extend the lifecycle of their legacy storage equipment. Improving the Return on Investment (ROI) of the expensive data storage often starts with an understanding of how to optimize the current storage infrastructure. Zerowait’s training can help.

“Over the last several years Zerowait’s customers have embraced our hands-on training, whether at their location or at our corporate headquarters,” said Mike Linett, President of Zerowait. “As we have grown, customers have asked us to offer classes in different regions of the county and at our Australian and UK offices. We decided that based on customer demand, we would have the class in Dallas at the same time as our Global Sales Conference–starting May 29, 2012. This way our customers can meet our teams from around the world.

Gary Lehr, PhD, Zerowait Senior engineer, will be leading this course. Gary says, “ I was a customer of Zerowait’s for over ten years while director of technical engineering at one of the largest global service providers, managing thousands of systems and petabytes of storage. With Zerowait’s help I was able to introduce NetApp to our international customers in the late 1990’s. We reduced the costs of management, service and support for our NetApp systems as they became viewed by the manufacturer as legacy equipment. I am excited to be teaching Zerowait’s customers ways to manage their NetApp equipment and reduce their costs of storage.”

Rob Robinson, Zerowait’s VP of Sales and Marketing agrees. “An educated client is our best customer,” he says. “When a student leaves our class they have targeted skills and knowledge that they can apply to their NetApp infrastructures. We’ve priced the class very competitively at only $1500, and as a bonus Zerowait offers a 10% discount on the next order after a class. This savings typically offsets the price of the class completely. In this global environment, with data availability critical to business success, Zerowait training provides our customers with the knowledge they need to succeed in the always on-line world.”

To learn more about Zerowait and our training programs go to http://www.zerowait.com/index.php/netapp/netapp-training

About Zerowait: Headquartered in Wilmington, Del., USA, and with offices around the world, Zerowait is the worldwide leader in independent service and support of NetApp filers. Zerowait solutions include off-lease fully licensed NetApp systems and the new Zerowait SimplStor line of single-name space archive storage. Storage administrators throughout the world rely on Zerowait to provide affordable solutions to the skyrocketing costs of data storage. http://www.zerowait.com

Over the last several years of providing practical, operational training to our NetApp customers there have been several times when we have been asked to hold a class in the Dallas area. We are scheduled to hold our first Dallas class at the end of May.

Our Dallas Three day NetApp training class is scheduled for  May 29th and we still  have a few seats open.

If you want to join the class, or would like to schedule a class on your location please give us a call to discuss your needs.

Yesterday I was visiting with customers around Baltimore and one of our customer’s offices overlooks the Constellation. It was a nice day and the view  of the ship was perfect. I had a good day of visiting customers and all of the folks  I visited are struggling with their costs of storage and storage growth issues.

The issue of resources, technology, and upgrade costs are  on everyone’s mind in the IT space.   Clearly corporate  budgeting is being effected by the uncertain  US tax environment and the increase in the costs of business that is due to hit US businesses  in January.  Uncertainty is driving many decision makers to be cautious and only purchase the  IT equipment that is  needed to get by.

Our third party NetApp support business is growing in companies that are purchasing new NetApp equipment, as well as with customers that are buying transferable licensed – off lease equipment, and our customers that are just expanding their storage on their Legacy filers. Zerowait support and equipment offers a high availability alternative for our customers with tight budgets.

Additionally, every one one of the customers I met was looking at affordable alternatives to NetApp storage and considering our SimplStor product line as the alternative they would select  because of Zerowait’s excellent service and support. For over 20 years we have been providing outstanding customer service to customers requiring high availability technology  services, and it has grown into a global business.

Over the last few weeks I have been working with several of our international clients in the energy, defense, and media sectors to help them solve some of their big data cost issues. Our customers are using RedHat throughout their enterprises and are looking for affordable big  storage solutions.

One of our customers sent us a link a few weeks ago about the updates to XFS and how it is going to be included in the next release of RedHat as a supported file system. The  video link below of Dave Chiner giving a talk provides a great overview of how the improved XFS can help our clients manage their large storage requirements.

Additionally, Redhat’s management  is  aggressively pushing storage development  as Jim Whitehurst – RedHat CEO – has said recently:

http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/27/i-would-like-to-work-at-red-hat/

“Open source is ultimately where all companies are heading,” Whitehurst stated flatly.

“…So far at Red Hat, my focus as been squarely on our datacenter business, trying to execute really well on our core offerings. I think the future is in the cloud and big data. Our acquisition of Gluster last year and the work we have done around these storage offerings gives us a huge opportunity — an opportunity that I think could actually be bigger than the Linux business.”

Our customers tell us  that they need a way of controlling their storage  costs while maintaining their high availability  storage equipment. After all, it was our NetApp support customers that helped us develop our SimplStor product line because they knew that we could provide them with enterprise level service and support for their hardware.

Yesterday I visited a large defense contractor and in addition to the NetApp support he was getting quotes on he wanted to know if our SimplStor products could help him with his large data archiving project without blowing his budget. It was an interesting conversation, and as with  so many of  our customers there was a recognition that Enterprise hardware support and Enterprise RedHat with a great file system  can provide an affordable high availability storage solution.

As regular readers of this blog know I travel a lot on business to see our global clients, and in the last three weeks I have been in Sydney, NSW; Australia, Dallas, TX; USA , Charlotte, NC; USA, our offices in Wilmington, DE; USA, and the last couple of days I have been in Toronto, ON; Canada.

A lot of the time I am pretty tired due to the time zones and I like to drink coffee. The Flat White that I get in Australia is absolutely the best coffee. Also, in Australia it seems that a lot of business meetings are in the coffee houses or the clubs over a Coopers beer. As you can imagine it is easy to stay hydrated while traveling to visit customers in Sydney, but there is the issue of drinking a lot of Flat White coffee and a lot of beer to contend with. Somehow business gets done, and Zerowait Corp. PTY in Australia is doing quite well.

In the USA, we just don’t have coffee as good as a Flat White. I like Newman’s Own for the Kuerig, and I drink a lot of it especially after I return from a trip to Sydney either in our Dallas, TX office or our Wilmington, DE Headquarters. I drink a lot of coffee in meetings in the USA also, but there are not as many meetings with beer as there are in Sydney. At home I like Sam Adams Cherry wheat on a hot day, or a Shiner Bock just about any time.

For the last couple of days I have been in the Toronto area visiting our customers. And when I am in downtown Toronto I often go to Jimmies Coffee. Today I went there with some customers and we ordered their Flat White. It is not as good as the Flat White I get in Sydney. At dinner with customers in Ontario I like to order the Rickards Red. For lunch in Toronto I like to go to Indian Restaurants, and they are really good here.

I have never done a statistical study of the business derived from meetings with coffee or meetings with beer, it might be an interesting project for a graduate student’s masters thesis. I think meeting personally with our customers helps Zerowait understand what our customers’ needs are and also helps me learn how we can help our customers accomplish their goals easier.

Over the last few years of traveling I have learned that folks around the world like to discuss business over coffee or beer, and that is one of the things that makes my travel schedule enjoyable. And I can dream that someday even the Airlines could make Sydney quality Flat White coffee.