Zerowait Corporation

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.

Zerowait provides hardware support and transferable licensed NetApp filers to a lot of Federal, State, and Military organizations. The Federal government and Military, in particular, typically hold on to Enterprise storage equipment longer than the commercial market does. Therefore, Zerowait’s NetApp Legacy support business for government organizations is growing steadily. Zerowait can and does save the agencies tremendous amounts of money, but due to the complex procurement process it takes quite some time to acquire new business from the Government. Perhaps this new IT procurement initiative will make the process a little more efficient.

http://www.technewsworld.com/story/74819.html

“Federal agencies will be moving significant portions of their annual IT spending to “commodity” type procurement vehicles by the end of 2012. As part of continuing reforms in IT acquisition and management, the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has directed agencies to immediately begin the process of consolidating IT procurement, with a focus on shared service arrangements.

The initiative is designed to accelerate the adoption of more efficient private sector IT acquisition practices by federal agencies.

“The stovepiped and complex nature of the federal enterprise has led over the years to a proliferation of duplicative and low priority investments in information technology,” Jeffrey Zients, acting director of OMB, said in a March 31 memo.”

However, as Doug Gaines mentions in the article:

“OMB states boldly that the new annual portfolio review process will ‘ensure that any inertia, which would relegate the federal government to the status quo, be rooted out on a recurring basis.’ But the Clinger-Cohen law set out to address many of the same issues in 1996, and the pace of progress has been glacial in the following years,” Gaines noted.

“Perhaps growing budget austerity will be the catalyst for real change,” he said.

Zerowait has been providing outstanding service and support to Government agencies for most of our 23 years in business, over the last 15 years our business with Federal, Military, and State IT groups has grown to about 15% of our annual business. As budgets tighten the government organizations we deal with are keeping their equipment longer and are looking for affordable high reliability service and support. And they know they can depend on Zerowait’s affordable high availability alternative to expensive OEM service support programs.

Last week I was in North Carolina visiting customers and at one of my stops our client told me that his NetApp support quote for his 3020 cluster was over $11,000.00 which he thought was ridiculous. He heard about Zerowait from several peers and was interested by what he heard, and so he did some research. His organization is now a customer of ours.

During our conversation he wanted to know about our company, and was surprised to hear that just the week before I was visiting clients in Sydney, Australia. Since 2002 when Zerowait went into the independent service and support business at the request of our NetApp clients, we have grown into a global parts and service business. I believe that the best way to understand your clients’ requirements is to go on as many customer visits as you can. I have learned a lot over the years from visiting with our customers, and occasionally the discussions I have result in new products for our customers.

Our SimplStor products were developed based on the input and requests of our customers, and recently a few of our clients have asked us to provide support for other parts of their network infrastructures. Our HD Rail Kits were also developed based on customer input, and these have proven to be very handy for our customers with constantly growing infrastructures.

Zerowait’s customers know that they can depend on our team to come up with solutions to their problems. And we are helping our clients meet their goals from our offices in around the world.

I spent a good part of March in our Australian office near Sydney. During my  time there I visited several of our customers and friends. Our NetApp support business is well established and growing rapidly in Australia and several customers asked us if we could add support for other equipment to our hardware coverage and support business. Our Australian customers recognize that we provide honest and transparent service and support, and they would like us to maintain more of their systems.

Our internal systems which maintain our inventory of parts and service policies were all written in house, and by making some simple adaptations we can provide service and support for other hardware vendor’s products that our customers want to us to maintain.

Our  Australian customers  often use the term “ the tyranny of distance” to describe the problems they have with the delays in getting freight and the costs associated with deliveries over the vast distances to Australia and within their country.  They like that our global inventory system and service policies automatically track parts delivered from our depots so that their parts replenishment is seamless and quick.

In order to provide our global customers with the global service and support they need we built a highly integrated knowledge base to provide timely information for  our engineers, customers, and warehouse personnel. The only part of the replenishment process that Zerowait does not control is the international freight companies and customs. And no matter how hard we try to overcome the hurdles of international freight and customs, we end up with unexpected delays. Our integrated systems take this into account and we hold extra parts in our Sydney warehouse due to the delays caused by freight companies, customs, and the tyranny of distance.

As our company grows our customers around the world know they can depend on Zerowait to deliver on our promises and to uphold our commitments. Honesty and Transparency are  the most important factors in our growth, since most of our growth is from the referrals of our customers.

Our Australian business is now over a year old, and is growing strongly. I am working with our team here for a couple of weeks, and visiting with several customers in the Oil and Gas business, FX business, and financial sector. The response to our NetApp specials has been strong in Australia, and we continue to grow our SimplStor sales in Australia also.

It looks like this is going to be another great year for Zerowait in Australia.

Several of our customers have been asking us questions about the viability and future of public cloud storage based on the recent government shutdown of MegaUpload. The concern is that, due to the malfeasance of another customer on a shared cyberlocker company, your own corporate data may be unavailable when you need it.

I forwarded several questions from our customers to our Attorney Philip Corwin, one of the leaders in the field of Cyber Law ( www.vlaw-dc.com). Phil’s answers highlight the uncertainty surrounding the future of public Cloud Storage, as a result of recent actions.

1) Can the DOJ take down any cloud storage provider without any prior notification to the legitimate users of the storage service? If so, how do legitimate users get their critical data access restored?

The DOJ will provide no advance notice to the users or operators of a domain and associated file-hosting/sharing service it believes to be engaged in unlawful criminal activity. The DOJ has made it clear that it has no near-term intent to restore any files to Megaupload.com users – that such users should not have kept their only copy on a remote service. It is unknown whether and to what extent the DOJ is reviewing files on the seized servers in a search for additional evidence of criminal activity. Some (primarily non-U.S.) Megaupload users have threatened to sue the DOJ for return of their files but no such action has yet been brought and there’s no telling how it might fare; in any event, no near-term relief is likely.

2) If our company is using a cyberlocker service, for back up and archival usage and the DoJ impounds the storage servers, how quickly can I get my data from the DoJ if I need to a restoration?

As noted above, the DOJ has given no indication as to whether or when it may permit any user of Megaupload.com to have access to and recover their files from the servers that have been seized.

3) What is the differentiation of a service provider like MegaUpload and Amazon S3 in the DoJ’s definition? Can the DoJ pull down our Amazon storage due to another user’s data storage usage practices?

It is not at all clear from the Megaupload indictment while it was criminally charged while other very similar services – such as Rapidshare and MediaFire — have not been, yet (as we have seen with domain seizures undertaken by the ICE division of the Department of Homeland Security, once a new criminal copyright enforcement tactic is employed it will likely be used again in other instances). One key element may have been the allegation that Megaupload paid users to upload infringing content in the past, although they had discontinued their “rewards” program at the time the criminal complaint was lodged. Amazon’s Cloud Drive is a no-frill cloud storage service with a 2GB limit on individual files and no file sharing function, so it is much less likely to be used for infringing purposes and become the target of a DOJ action.

4) If a public access storage provider can be shuttered by the DoJ for one or two suspect cyberlockers , can a Colo Facility or a Network Provider also be shuttered?

Any entity that is knowingly and willfully engaged in large scale online infringement for profit can be a potential target of a DOJ enforcement action. Network service providers do enjoy secondary liability immunity under the DMCA’s notice-and-takedown procedures safe harbor, but only if they expeditiously remove infringing files and refrains from any activity that constitutes direct infringement.

5) Is our data loss insured in the event of a felony or RICO action by the government when it takes down a public access storage provider?

That would depend on the exact terms of your insurance policy. But even monetary compensation cannot replace seized files, so it is best to retain at least one copy of all stored and shared files on hard drives under your direct control.

6) Would you recommend that customers move their data to secure internal clouds, based on the new legal uncertainties surrounding public cloud storage services up time guarantees?

If you can afford to do so a private cloud under your own control would be the safest bet. If that isn’t feasible, at least one copy of all files placed on remote servers should be saved on your own devices. And there will be a need for much greater due diligence investigation of file hosting and sharing services to determine whether they are likely targets of criminal enforcement actions that include website shutdown and server seizures.

Philip Corwin’s Website is www.vlaw-dc.com and he is Of Counsel to Greenberg + Lieberman www.aplegal.com

1) Your CapEx budget for Network Storage infrastructure.

2) Your OpEx budget for Operation expenses like service and support.

3) Zerowait’s international service and support business for NetApp hardware.

Well, that was pretty easy. Zerowait’s service and support business is booming because it is a very rare company that has an increasing IT budget for storage hardware or services, even though demand  for storage is increasing all the time. That is why more and more companies around the world are contacting  our international offices for service and support quotes for their NetApp equipment. In the USA  our NetApp support prices start at just $1500.00 a year.

In 2012 we expect our service business to grow 25% based on the current trend line. I hope that we can discuss your NetApp infrastructure support costs over the next few months.  Since the new year we have added  new customers who love NetApp’s reliability but due to budget restrictions  have embraced Zerowait’s  attractive prices  on NetApp filers with transferable licenses.

Additionally, why not try our Free Exception Reporter  to help  you manage your NetApp infrastructure?  Organizations  around the world rely on it to help them manage their storage and its associated costs.

Usually our business gets slower through December and January, but the last couple of months have been a whirlwind of new orders from our established customers and many new customers.

According to our customers our business is increasing for many reasons:

1. NetApp has increased their hard drive prices, due to the shortage and Zerowait has plenty of storage in  house and ready to ship.
2. NetApp is trying to influence customers to upgrade to 64 Bit versions of OnTap but many customers are perfectly satisfied with their current 32 Bit OnTap versions. or want to purchase  NetApp systems with transferable licenses.
3. In a slow growth economy even the largest companies and government agencies are looking to reduce their support costs,  Zerowait services like our Free Exception Reporter can help Filer  customers economize.

Most of our new business still comes from the referrals  and references of our customers. And as our client base grows, we get more referrals.  If you are looking for an affordable alternative to NetApp for components, service, or support please keep us in mind.