While the overall US economy seems to be stuck in a sort of malaise, Zerowait’s business is growing nicely. The number of new customers we have gotten this year, as well as the overall increase in business has us looking at opening new locations and adding additional staff and warehouse space.

The uncertainty of the business and tax environment is causing many companies to embrace our independent NetApp support, and our SimplStor product line is flourishing. I am often asked ” which business sectors are growing fastest for Zerowait?” I explain that our customers are not concentrated in any vertical market, but seem to be in the horizontal marketplace of high availability storage and are looking for ways to lower their costs of storage acquisition and maintenance.

It seems that our new customers are primarily looking for value and reliability, and we seem to be fulfilling these requirements for more and larger customers and installations. In uncertain times, we provide an affordable security blanket for many companies.

Zerowait Supports NetApp Infrastructure in United Kingdom

Zerowait Corporation, a data-storage service company, boasts an international reputation for providing NetApp customers with an affordable solution for maintaining their legacy high-availability storage hardware.

We enjoy working with Imagination whenever we can

Newark, DE (PRWEB) July 21, 2010

Over the last few years, Zerowait has worked with Imagination Technologies, located in Hertfordshire, UK, to provide affordable storage and support for its NetApp infrastructure.

“Zerowait has helped us reduce our storage costs substantially. Their engineering staff have always been honest and forthright and have provided us with excellent solutions for Imagination’s demanding IT infrastructure,” says John Metcalfe, COO of Imagination Technologies.

“We’re migrating to a mixed data-storage environment, and I look forward to Zerowait continuing to provide us with excellent service and support for our NetApp infrastructure,” adds Metcalfe.

“We enjoy working with Imagination whenever we can,” says Zerowait UK managing director Farat Buta. “Their engineering team always pushes the envelope, and Zerowait’s engineers like the creativity that their solutions require,” he says.

Zerowait provides affordable parts, service and support for customers throughout Europe and is anticipating an increased global demand for their third-party NetApp service and support business.

“Zerowait is continually investing in engineering, technology and operations,” says Zerowait chief executive Mike Linett. “We are focused on providing our customers the best service and support possible. Our goal is total customer satisfaction,” says Linett.

About Zerowait Corporation: Headquartered in Wilmington, Delaware (USA), Zerowait is internationally recognized for honesty, integrity and expertise in third-party, high-availability NetApp data storage and support solutions. Zerowait’s experience, knowledge and focus provide unparalleled service to its worldwide customer base. For more information, visit www.zerowait.com.

For more info on our UK and European services contact Farat Buta – Manchester ,UK uksales@zerowait.com – 44 0 161 737 0303

To preview and request product sales and hardware specifications, log on to the Zerowait Online Store at www.thezerowaitstore.com.

Over the last few weeks I traveled across the USA visiting several clients of ours. Many of the clients told me how tight their budgets were and blamed it on the uncertainty facing their business sector. In particular the medical and natural resources customers I met with were very concerned about the next 12 months.

Over dinner in Dallas with several clients I heard how our customers are planning how to remain profitable when gross revenue is down 10% in 2011. Additionally, they expect the cost of medical insurance and taxes to increase by about 10% in 2011. These folks are planning to remain profitable in a dismal business environment and that takes a lot of creativity and out of the box thinking.

Our typical customer is increasing their usage of our independent NetApp service and support and increasing the life cycle of their NetApp storage equipment. They expect that will reduce their costs of storage and support by 30% next year. So, even if their budget declines they will be able to maintain their QoS.

Thomas Sowell seems to have also noticed the issue: (http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=540126&p=2):

When you hire somebody in this environment, you know what you have agreed to pay them and what additional costs there may be for their health insurance or other benefits. But you have no way of knowing what additional costs the politicians in Washington are going to impose, when they are constantly coming up with new bright ideas for imposing more mandates on business.

One of the little-noticed signs of what is going on has been the increase in the employment of temporary workers. Businesses have been increasingly meeting their need for labor by hiring temporary workers and working their existing employees overtime, instead of hiring new people.

Why? Because temporary workers usually don’t get health insurance or other benefits, and working existing employees overtime doesn’t add to the cost of their benefits.

Rational business executives are desperately looking for cost reductions as a business survival strategy, but they need to reduce costs without increasing risk. Zerowait’s products, services and support are viewed as part of a solution in an uncertain business environment thanks to our staff’s reputation for high availability service and support. Over the last couple of months requests from customers for our help in NetApp migrations and implementations has increased as companies hesitancy to hire full time engineers increases. Viewed in this light the increase in Zerowait’s business this year makes a lot of sense.

If your storage budget is getting squeezed, maybe it is time to call Zerowait .

Jul 07, 2010 – With an expanding international client base specializing in the Digital Effects industry, Zerowait provided Fuel VFX with a cost-effective storage solution that satisfied their timeframe and budget. “Zerowait engineers worked closely with Fuel VFX and together deployed equipment and personnel to successfully complete the project.” says Zerowait chief executive Mike Linett.

Established in 2000, Fuel VFX has worked on a number of blockbuster movies including Iron Man 2, Wolverine and Bedtime Stories. With an immediate need to add 20 terabytes of storage to their system and an increase in overall performance, Dylan Penhale, IT Manager, Fuel VFX contacted Zerowait to execute the install. “From the first meeting, through post installation, they didn’t miss a beat. Zerowait was prepared to meet our demanding schedule and even flew an engineer out to assist us.” added Penhale.

Zerowait’s Australian NetApp business has recently seen a strong upward trend in the configuration and deployment of complex NetApp storage systems. Zerowait’s Exception Reporter enables Zerowait’s customers to easily monitor their NetApp Filer performance and capacity, which helps them optimize their storage infrastructure. “Zerowait’s Australian business is growing rapidly, and we are working toward establishing a service and support facility in the Sydney area similar to our European office in Manchester, UK.” adds Linett.

“Zerowait was prepared to meet our demanding schedule. For us, there simply isn’t a better value way to get high-end filers onto our network. I certainly will recommend Zerowait to our peers in the Digital Effects industry.” says Penhale.

About Zerowait Corporation – Headquartered in Wilmington, Delaware, USA, Zerowait is internationally recognized for honesty, integrity and expertise in third-party, high availability NetApp data storage and support solutions. Zerowait’s experience, knowledge and focus provide an unparalleled service to their worldwide customer base. For more information, visit www.zerowait.com.

To preview and request product sales and hardware specifications, log on to the Zerowait Online Store at www.thezerowaitstore.com.

May 13- Wrap up.

EMC World 2010 was another great event put on by the folks at EMC. Linda Christensen does a great job. We caught up with a lot of our customers at the show and we met with a number of old friends also. Jon Toor is with www.Xsigo.com now and their booth was busy for most of the show. Phil Van Ettan was also very busy at the www.Azaleos.com booth. Additionally, we had a good conversation with Charles Wood at www.f5networks.com about their single name space solution. We also had a long and interesting conversation with Simon Robinson of the 451 Group. Robin Harris www.storagemojo.com stopped by to get our view of the storage environment and we had a long conversation with him.

Having our rail kit on hand was a funny experience, some folks looked at us like we were crazy, others couldn’t grab the brochure fast enough.

Here are some shots from another satisfied customer. iWeb in Canada recently purchased some off lease systems and storage, and sent us the following pictures:

We’re off to a great start this year as more customers recognize the cost savings Zerowait can provide. Give us a call today and we’ll help you fit your increased requirements into your reduced budget. It’s not magic – but it feels like it.

It has been an exciting and busy couple of weeks since I returned from the trade show in Anchorage, AK. I met a lot of great folks while in Anchorage and we generated plenty of interest with our service and support offerings. I did not expect the show to be as well attended as it was and we are considering doing more of the Interface shows. The picture below is of our friend Jeremy Provencio in the Applied Microsystems trade show booth:

From May 10 through May 13 we are going to be at the EMC World show and while in Boston we will also be meeting with a number of our clients. If you are going to be at the EMC World show We have purchased a completely new trade show booth, and the graphics are amazing. Zerowait’s booth is 122, I hope you can stop by our booth. We will be right next to the Riverbed folks which is convenient, since many of our clients are also Riverbed customers.

Our customers convinced us there was an opportunity for a simple reliable storage solution. The last two years have been hard on everyone’s budget, and a number of our customers asked if we had a less expensive storage solution than their current systems. We were also hearing from clients that were building out very large secondary storage pools, and they told us they simply couldn’t afford the large array vendors’ hardware, and more important, software and support costs. We talked to clients for over 8 months, taking their suggestions back to our engineering staff. From there we went back to our customers to make sure we understood their opinions on what was important and to ask them what they would pay for the product. We found that the sweet spot for this storage solution was between 50 cents and 75 cents a GB with raw capacity of 24TB to 100TB.

Once we had all the data, our engineers went to work to design a product that would be reliable and provide the customers with the alert and monitoring notifications that they are used to from the big array companies. We built a number of prototype units for customers to test. From these evaluations we made improvements to better align our storage solution to their requirements. At every step we learned something new, which we passed back to our customers for opinions and feedback.

SimplStor meets the needs of many customers for low cost storage while providing the hardware support and life-cycle they have learned to expect from the big iron guys. And our SimplSupport provides customers the notifications they need to simplify monitoring and maintenance. One of our evaluators summarized the product as follows:

“Zerowait’s new SimplStor gives me tier 1 storage and support at tier 3 pricing – finally someone got it right.” Eff Norwood – Storage Architect

If you are interested in affordable enterprise storage please give us call. Phone 302 996 9408 – toll free 888.811.0808

Enterprise storage fads are often like weather vanes and can change direction as quickly as the wind. New theories, old software and overstretched hyperbole are often discussed in the media and at tradeshows simply to satisfy the marketing departments of the vendors who pay for the articles and venues. Finally, there seems to be an awakening within corporate America that enterprise storage is costing way too much money and resources to manage and maintain. The SAN NAS wars have been fought to a draw. The conclusion seems to be as simple as ”different strokes for different folks”. Today’s battle is for budgets and about cost control. Can today’s entrenched storage oligarchs adapt to the needs of the customers in this hyper-sensitive fiscal environment?

The debate has been fairly one sided until recently. The storage oligarchs have locked in users with their proprietary operating systems, and the tertiary vendors try to mimic the big players’ features while trying to lock in their customers with their own proprietary solutions. Although the terminology varies slightly, every vendor is pitching their own version of Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt.

The storage oligarchs like to point out that the fear of lock-in is overblown. After all, they have studies which prove that their point of view is correct and backed by studies and reports from the best analysts money can buy. The oligarchs seemingly ignore the accumulating evidence which proves that end users are embracing open source solutions to cut their costs. Today, many customers look at proprietary software much like water pollution. Similar to pollution (which can be ignored when it starts from a low baseline), proprietary storage can end up creating an increasingly complex migration and clean up when the time eventually comes. It often seems that an oligarch’s sales team overlooks the myriad consequences of their own proprietary software policies, while highlighting how much their competitors solution can cost the customer.

I can’t tell you when the storage oligarchs will face a business decline, but there exists another path, one that empowers the end users by leveraging open source solutions. The assumption that all storage can be handled by one proprietary vendor ignores the fact that every organization has different types of storage throughout the organization. There is no predetermined optimum amount of enterprise storage any company must have within its organization. The forces of storage growth and decline are based on users and their needs within their environments. Draftsmen and Civil Engineers have much different needs for their storage resources than Radiology Technicians, Cartoonists and Animators. Storage growth is often the result of uncontrollable external forces. For storage administrators today there needs to be an option that allows them to harness the power of open source solutions which can provide the high availability that enterprise storage requires while addressing the strains on today’s budgets. Zerowait has answered this need with our SimplStor solution. After almost two decades in a bipolar world, storage administrators have a choice again. The market has accepted open source solutions for a variety of reasons. With this acceptance storage administrators have begun to embrace the power of Linux, Open Solaris and BSD to provide their storage networks with mass storage at an affordable price.

www.simplstor.com