Zerowait Corporation

Jeff Klein, a long term customer of Zerowait’s, recently wrote an article for tech zone about independent third party support and refurbished parts for legacy Information Technology equipment. It is a well written article and I think it is worth your time to understand the issues involved. Here are some interesting excerpts.

* “The Federal Government spent $2,034,269,948 on new equipment while only spending only $9,114,676 on refurbished. A resounding 99.6 percent of Federal IT dollars was spent with OEMs and OEM authorized resellers.”

* “Still others [OEMs] issue fictitious list prices. These can be a much as 200 to 300 percent higher than what they will charge a good customer, i.e., they can offer the perception of huge discounts to end customers while asking independents to pay much higher list prices for the same product or part.”

Jeff’s article ends with this :

“The solution is simple. Corporate IT buyers must join with their independent suppliers to demand that manufacturers: 1. Stop their attacks on independents. 2. Call on the U.S. Department of Justice to commence hearings to determine if AGMA is in violation of anti-trust laws. Without coordinated action, competition will continue to be curtailed, prices will rise, choices will be limited and free trade in America will be a little less free. ”

http://www.techzone360.com/topics/techzone/articles/2012/07/24/300192-how-americas-top-oems-trying-crush-third-party.htm

Over the last few days I have been in Sydney, Australia visiting with our staff and clients here. Zerowait Corp. PTY has been in Australia for just over 18 months and we have quite a few customers in the media and financial services business sectors here.  Every time I come here I am more impressed with the engineering and technical staffs of the companies we visit. There is a lot of ingenuity here, and our SimplStor Products and  independent NetApp support are doing well here.

Last night I was at a gathering of VFX folks in Newtown at the Marly bar and I was talking to folks about robotics and developments in camera technology for film and animation. The VFX community here includes customers of ours in the commercials business, movie business, and the TV business, and I really enjoy coming to Sydney for these evening gatherings. I wish that we could put events like this together in the USA. As mentioned previously in this blog the Aussies have great beer and it is hard not to enjoy a few of them when you are out in the evening with customers and friends.

Laurence Jones, who runs our office in Lane Cove West has pulled things together over the last year and a half  and set up an excellent office. Our business in  Australia is  doing really great thanks to his efforts. It is really pretty amazing to think back to November of 2010 when one of our customers asked us to set up the  Australian operation and to see that  18 months later we have a growing business that is gaining more customers every month.

Finally, I can’t say enough good things about our Attorney’s in Sydney. As an American, dealing with the rules and regulations of setting up a company in Australia and keeping things consistent between the two countries  different business law systems has been an education.  After 18 months we have finally gotten things figured out.  Based on what we have accomplished we expect that over the next 18 months we will  substantially increase our business in Australia.

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.