Zerowait Corporation

For most of this week I was visiting clients in North Carolina.  Almost all of the clients I met have an expanding storage requirement but a shrinking budget. The chill of austerity has  finally hit storage budgets.

Zerowait offers our customers several solutions that help them maintain their current storage and add additional storage even in these difficult economic times.

1)  Several of the customers I met this week  are using their R200’s, FAS3020’s and FAs3050’s for archiving and are not looking to upgrade, additionally they  can’t afford NetApp’s support contracts – which might not even be available after the end of the year fro some systems.  Zerowait’s Next Business Day hardware support contracts for NetApp Filers start at just $1500.00/yr and are a viable  alternative for customers who are happy with their 32 bit NetApp storage infrastructure.

2) Transferable licenses are a great way to get the NetApp  features you need at a price you can afford. Many clients I met with have taken advantage of Transferable Licensed Systems to get the NetApp systems and storage they need at a price that they can afford. Zerowait has a large variety of Transferable Licensed systems available, call our offices in Europe, USA, or Australia if you need an affordable NetApp storage solution  quickly.

3) Zerowait’s new SimplStor product line is quickly gaining attention from storage administrators around the world. SimplStor starts at just $20K for 68TB and easily expands to a Petabyte.

If your company is struggling with your storage requirements under a tight budget, Zerowait is the answer!

Sydney, Australia  July 25, 2011

Fuel VFX has added Zerowait’s SimplStor NAS archive to its storage architecture. Using proprietary tiering software developed in house by Fuel VFX, volumes on the 4U, 68TB unit provide nearline access for scripts and a library of film assets. In addition, the SimplStor is used to provide nearstore volumes, reducing the time of the backup window for Flame suites (now disk to disk), with the tape library now attached to the SimplStor. Dylan Penhale, Chief Technical Officer, said: “We knew SimplStor offered excellent value and density, but we’ve been pleasantly surprised by its performance. Transfers have been faster than we expected, offering better performance for our users and helping to further shrink our backup windows. ”

Laurence Jones, Managing Director of Zerowait Pty, added: “Fuel VFX is the first of the Australian Digital Effects companies to install SimplStor, but based on conversations we have had with others in this community we know requirements for low cost high capacity disk archive are pressing everyone in media creation. SimplStor’s price/density ratio, with tier one support, makes it an ideal solution for these applications.” Added Mike Linett, President of Zerowait: “We began working with Fuel VFX over a year ago on their Tier One NetApp Storage. With the opening of our Sydney office, they realized we were committed to providing outstanding service in Australia, and their purchase of SimplStor shows their confidence in our ability to provide business critical support.”

SimplStor offers easily extensible NAS disk archive storage for less than the cost of tape. Combined with off lease NetApp systems, enterprise class support and offices in the US, Europe and Australia, Zerowait offers customers worldwide the cost saving solutions they need to meet today’s shrinking IT budgets.

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

About Fuel VFX
Fuel was founded in 2000 with a vision to create a creatively-driven, innovative visual effects studio that could inspire both clients and crew. Fuel offers full-service visual effects, CG animation, design and post-production services, including a unique and dedicated colour-grading suite. Fuel also boasts a senior, international technical team to help solve complex sequences. Feature film credits include COWBOYS & ALIENS, CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER, THOR, IRON MAN 2, X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE, THE SPIRIT, THE TREE and AUSTRALIA. Commercial clients include agencies M&C Saatchi, Publicis Mojo, DDB, Clemenger BBDO and Production Companies Good Oil, Plaza, Photoplay, 8 Commercials and The Feds. Following Fuel’s work on THE SPIRIT, the company has continued its work with the legendary Frank Miller on commercials for Gucci fragrances via RSA London. Other credits include commercials for clients such as Toyota, Heineken, Johnson & Johnson, Sony, McDonald’s, BMW, Nissan, Wrigley’s, Canon and Visa. http://www.fuelvfx.com

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Read the full story at http://www.prweb.com/releases/2011/7/prweb8644036.htm

I was in Illinois last week visiting with several of our customers and while in Chicago I was parked next to the new Marilyn Monroe Statue.   There certainly were a lot of admirers of the statue.

We do a lot of NetApp support business in and around Chicago,  and I got to  visit with a lot of customers in just a few days.  Many of our customers are looking for alternatives to NetApp because they don’t have the budgets   anymore to afford the upgrade path that NetApp’s sales folks are suggesting to them.

With budgets tight, many customers don’t want to upgrade to NetApp’s 64 bit storage solutions but want to maintain their 32 bit storage.  Their storage equipment is highly reliable and with Zerowait’s support it remains much more affordable to maintain their legacy NetApp systems than to upgrade and replace them.

I also had several good meetings with customers about our SimplStor storage products. I heard the same type of issues that I heard in Boston a couple of weeks ago about the costs of keeping LTO tape libraries running. Several of the customers I talked to like our SimplStor solutions and think it is the right answer for the times.

Over the last few years Zerowait’s growth has been fueled by the recommendations and referrals of our customers. This week I was talking to a customer who first contacted us many years ago based on a referral. Like so many network and storage managers he is trying to solve a series of storage infrastructure problems that have accumulated over time due to network and software changes.  Each budget cycle he has to choose which service and support packages he can afford within his operations budget, and which items will have to forego support. Some items will be replaced with capital budget items, but those are getting harder to justify and the procurement cycles seem to be getting longer.  As everyone in the business understands, providing high availability is difficult under a restricted budget.

Zerowait’s affordable service and support for his NetApp equipment helps stretch his budget to keep other parts of his critical infrastructure under maintenance contracts, but some of the support contract pricing provided by the OEM’s is truly outrageous.  His current problem is that they depend on a tape library which was built by an OEM that was purchased by a bigger company, which was then purchased by an even bigger company, and now support pricing has gone through the roof.  The latest support quote for his library is more than the original purchase price! Archiving is a requirement, but there is no way to fit that quote into the department’s budget.  I suggested that he consider a SimplStor solution to replace the tape library.

SimplStor solves his current tape library support cost problems, and he understands that using open source software means he won’t get locked into the proprietary software support cost spiral that he is constantly fighting with his other storage vendors.  We are solving his tape library support problem today, and eliminating a costly software support contract from future budgets.

That’s one reason  why our customers keep recommending us.

I was visiting customers in the New York and Boston areas last week and we were discussing their plans for their storage infrastructure in 2012.  We discussed the usual complaints about the high cost of proprietary hardware and software used to manage and maintain their growing storage requirements. But I also heard a lot about  and the high cost of tape and archive tape storage.

When visiting with customers it is pretty common to hear complements about  how Zerowait’s independent NetApp  service and support perfectly fill in the gaps that NetApp leaves with their legacy support policies.  NetApp is focused on building and selling new products, and Zerowait concentrates on supporting legacy NetApp equipment. Our business has grown internationally by concentrating on providing storage value into this High Availability niche market.

Last week a majority of the customers that I saw mentioned that they were considering our SimplStor as a complementary storage archive to their LTO tape investments. As I listened to our customers I heard a common theme that Iron Mountain was charging a lot for tape storage.  It seems that the point may have been reached where tape storage cost and the SimplStor starting price of $20K for 68TB  makes SimplStor as a  disk archive a complementary solution to archiving tape. According to one customer I met their ROI for using our SimplStor as a tape replacement was less than 6 months due to the prices of tape library maintenance, cost of tape, and  the cost of remote tape storage.

As the overall economy remains in the doldrums many of our customers are looking for affordable alternatives for their secondary and tertiary storage requirements.  And it looks like Zerowait has the right solutions for a growing community of enterprise storage users.

We are getting ready for the SEG show in September in San Antonio. Last year’s show was really great and we met a lot of our customers there and also learned a lot about the  Oil and Gas business.

The Oil and Gas sector of our business has been growing steadily over the years, and  it was one of the many reasons that we opened our office in Texas.  Folks in the Oil and Gas business need affordable storage, and often in very large amounts, which is why they like our affordable support options for their NetApp legacy equipment.  Our SimplStor archival product is  also doing well in this sector.

If  you are making plans to go to the SEG show and are in the data storage business, I hope you will stop by to visit our booth.  We will be introducing some new products there!

Over the last several weeks a friend of mine has been working his way through a recommendation from his hardware vendor as to whether he should upgrade his storage hardware and software. He is being cautious because he has done upgrades before and found that sometimes he gets only some of the benefits that his vendors’ Analysts, Engineers and Sales teams have promised. Sometimes upgrading has made his storage infrastructure less efficient by his internal metrics and he does not want to experience that again.

Discussing the options over the last few weeks we came up with a series of questions he wants his vendors to answer before he upgrades:

1) Does this vendor mandated software or hardware upgrade solve a significant problem that is unlikely to have a patch or repair kit in the near future so that we can maintain our current hardware solution?

2) Is the vendor unbiased in their upgrade recommendation, or is this mandated upgrade a tool for their own revenue enhancement ?

3) Does the vendor mandated solution actually address any systemic issues that we are experiencing?

4) What is the complete range of solutions that can solve our vendor’s mandated upgrade, besides the upgrade ? Is “do nothing at all” a viable solution that we could live with?

5) What problems will arise from implementing the vendor’s mandated solution? Can we identify all of the problems and costs before we select a solution?

6) Would the vendor’s solution solve our problem less expensively than another solution. What are our manpower and additional infrastructure costs if we implement the change?

7) Will implementing the vendors solution cause our users any downtime, or additional manpower after we implement the change?

Most hardware and software vendors concentrate on identifying and providing solutions which selling their products to their customers will solve. That is not the same thing as providing customers solutions to their own storage infrastructure problems.

Over the last few months we have seen an increase in interest in our NetApp support services, and the interest has turned into a lot of new customers and orders. Based on the conversations that our staff has had with our new customers I think there is a combination of reasons for the increase in our business.

First, NetApp is giving their customers End of Life (EOL) notifications on a lot of equipment. For many enterprises upgrading to new 64 bit equipment is not currently an option in their budget plans.

Second, there is fear in the boardrooms of many organizations that we are in an era reminiscent of the 1970’s stagflation. One of my friends sent me this link this morning which describes the concerns in his company’s executive office well:

“With inflation rising and GDP forecasts continuing to be revised downward, fears of stagflation have crept back into the economy, with the economy hovering in a dangerous position between two possible outcomes: recovery or crash.

Stagflation is a sort of market purgatory, while we wait for one of two possibilities. Either the economy will recover and we’ll have inflation, or the economy will continue to stagnate, and we’ll end up with deflation.

While we will eventually work our way out of stagflation, inflation is hard to maintain if the global economy goes into a slowdown or decline. When the economy does begin to recover, it will bring inflation.

With QE2, Fed Chairman Bernanke has opened Pandora’s box, and once you open the box, it’s hard to control. When the banks start lending again, it will unleash the reserves that the Fed has pumped into the economy and there will be big inflation.”

Whether your company is trying to maintain legacy NetApp equipment, or trying to reduce expenditures due to economic fears, Zerowait has affordable solutions for NetApp service and support. Additionally, our SimplStor is a complementary archive storage alternative which starts at just $20,000.00 for 68 TB.

As many of our clients know we occasionally hold training classes for them on issues relating to Filers and storage issues. Above is a class picture of the class that finished today. Our clients asked great questions and we received good comments on our class and a couple of good suggestions on how we can improve it for our next class.

We believe that educating our customers benefits us as much as them, and our customers seem to agree. We learned a lot from this class of customers about the operational and budget issues that affect their storage. An interesting topic in this class and in others we have had is the many different ways that clients handle their primary and archival storage growth.

Our customer students really like our Exception Reporter and told us that it is a great tool for managing their filers. They also really like our SimplStor, in fact, one of our students in this class called a friend of his and now we are quoting his friend’s company on a SimplStor.

We will be holding two more classes this year, and one of them will be in our Sydney office.

Sydney Opera House top picture, Auckland Harbor bottom picture

I flew back from Sydney on Thursday, and I have been trying to catch up from the trip since I returned. There certainly are a lot of customers in Australia and New Zealand that were happy to talk to us about our Affordable Alternatives to NetApp’s service and support, and there was tremendous interest in our SimplStor our complementary archiving solution.