Zerowait Corporation

The Economist this week leads with a story about the falling dollar.

For Zerowait, and our NetApp customers, a falling dollar is a good thing. Currently, our European and Asian NetApp business is about 20% of our total yearly sales. A falling dollar means our Asian and European customers will be able to purchase our storage at a lower cost because their currencies will buy more dollars, and our NetApp storage is sold in dollars. This in turn means that Zerowait will be able to buy more inventory in the USA, and offer our European, Asian and American customers even lower prices.

The more customers we win, the more inventory we get, and the lower our overall pricing can be. It is a circle based on a competitive markets model that would make Adam Smith proud!

“It has become dramatically clear that the foundation of corporate integrity is personal integrity.” (DiPiazza, Sam, CEO of PriceswaterhouseCoopers. May 13, 2003. It’s All Down to Personal Values. http:www.pwcglobal.com).

Jon Toigo called me on Wednesday and asked me if I had heard anything about tax trouble involving NetApp. I told him that I did not know anything regarding this issue, but I would look into it in the afternoon. By the afternoon his Blog had some insightful comments on the issue from someone who understands the financial aspects better than I do.

A short time after our conversation a customer sent me this link to an article which is worth reading completely.

And by the afternoon I had been sent a couple of other links which were interesting in regards to NetApp’s Culture and Business Ethics, but this one was the most interesting from the San Jose Mercury

Splitting fact from fiction and hype is often difficult in the technology sector, what Karl Von Clausewitz said about war can apply to technology also. – “Many intelligence reports in war are contradictory; even more are false, and most are uncertain. “

From the Wall Street Journal 12/2/06

Marketing hype and sales puffery are one aspect of the business technology culture that most purchasers understand and kid each other about. Financial hype and puffery are taken a lot more seriously. I hope it all works out okay for NetApp, Dave Hitz and the gang created some great technology that many customers depend on for their data integrity. The better NetApp does, the bigger Zerowait’s market becomes, therefore, I hope they solve these issues quickly.

Ephemeral Storage equipment

Over the last few weeks we have been speaking to a client that is rather concerned about the ephemeral nature of his NetApp equipment. Although he trusts his data is secure with NetApp, he was not so confident about the longevity of his NetApp equipment. He is concerned that according to his NetApp salesman he is going to have to upgrade his R100 and F800 series equipment, because NetApp is going to end support for them soon. Like so many of our legacy NetApp customers he is aggravated by the constant upgrade path that he is on, his conversation reminded me of the picture of a gerbil on a wheel of never ending upgrades. I assured him that we support several hundred NetApp filers around the world and that the equipment he has is very reliable. He asked to contact some of our references, and got back to me a couple of days later after speaking with them, he had a completely new understanding of his NetApp equipment and the life cycle we can provide him with. He was very excited by his newer lower cost of ownership and maintenance.

NetApp equipment can be long lasting and quite cost effective if you use our affordable alternative to NetApp for Legacy equipment support.

More Channel Trouble for NetApp?

Until recently we were told that Fujitsu Siemens and NetApp were partners, and it seems that they have been for a long time. From 2003…

Network Appliance Inc and Fujitsu Siemens Computers, announced that they will expand their partnershp to offer European customers dedicated consulting resources coupled with a server and enterprise storage platform optimized for the Oracle Database environments. Through the partnership, the two companies will open a new state-of-the-art Center of Excellence (CoE) facility at Oracle Corp’s Munich, Germany, campus. Dedicated experts and resources will be on-call at the CoE to help customers easily and cost-effectively deploy server and storage systems.

But now we learn there may be trouble in paradise

Fujitsu Siemens challenges EMC and NetApp on virtual tape

Fujitsu Siemens Computers is taking its CentricStor virtual tape appliance to midsize users, introducing two entry-level models with a mere 2.7TB of caching disk each and the ability to connect to one tape library and up to four physical tape drives.

Is there any partnership that NetApp has that is trouble free?
If you have gotten left in the cold by one of NetApp’s crumbling partnerships, give Zerowait a call we can maintain your equipment at a reasonable cost and for a long time. to come.

It is possible to fly without motors, but not without knowledge and skill – Wilbur Wright

Just as Orville and Wilbur found out, if you study the fundementals you will learn that the common knowledge is often misleading or just plain wrong.

Almost on a daily basis we get calls from NetApp customers who have been misled by NetApp’s sales folks or some NetApp broker or dealer about the equipment they have or as to whether it can be upgraded or serviced by a company other than NetApp. The common refrain from NetApp’s folks is that there is no such thing as a transferable license or that you can’t upgrade systems to use different shelves and drives.

At Zerowait we are specialists in NetApp equipment, according to our customers we provide better service and support than the manufacturer does, and that is not just for legacy equipment. NetApp’s customers are learning that our Affordable Alternative to NetApp for service and support means that when they do upgrade we can help them save money. Recently there has been a thread on the NetApp newsgroup explaining how you can save money by playing IBM against NetApp for competitive quotes on the same equipment and software. From a negotiating strategy this is a great way to save serious money for a customer.

A recent posting on the newsgroup included the following:
From what I hear IBM is cutting the prices dramatically.

It is an interesting business strategy for IBM, they have put themselves in the reseller business for NetApp and are winning deals by cutting price. This means that their margins must be razor thin on a lot of these sales they are making. I never thought I would see IBM’s sales force in the business of cutting prices to win any business they can. They used to be the gold standard. We are in interesting times as the year comes to a close .

But savvy customers can use these strange times to their advantage, NetApp makes great equipment and software – it is just way overpriced. But if you buy it from Zerowait you get all the advantages of NetApp equipment, and software with transferable licenses – at a fraction of the cost. And with our Zerowait support you will save even more – and have access to the best technical support for NetApp equipment.

Just ask our customers!

Holiday NetApp Transferable license specials:

FAS980’s with NFS
FAS940’s available with NFS / CIFS and Cluster
R150’s with NFS / CIFS
R100’s with NFS / CIFS

Many of our customers like to keep their environments as homogeneous as possible so we also have plenty of F880’s, F840’s and F825’s available with transferable licensing also.

Call us at 888.811.0808 in the USA or 08000.121.801 in the UK – or email us at sales@Zerowait.com for a price quote. I hope you will join the Zerowait family of customers, you will be glad you did!

“Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success.”
Henry Ford

* Beginning – Zerowait started introducing customers to NetApp’s products in 1998 when we signed our reseller agreement. Our understanding of High Availability infrastructures made it a natural fit for our customers.

* Progress – When NetApp cancelled our reseller agreement most of our customers stayed with us for service and support of their NetApp equipment, because our service was more affordable friendlier and quite frankly BETTER!

* Success – Since 2002 we have added a lot of customers inthe USA and around the world. So many customers have been added that we have had to open an office in Europe, and we are looking to open an office in Asia in 2007. The reasons for our success are actually pretty simple.

– Long term focus on customers’ support needs.
– Affordable alternatives to the OEM’s pricing model – using transferable licensed equipment.
– Commitment to service levels.
– Tremendous depth of inventory that we keep growing to service our customers’ legacy NetApp equipment.
– Specific custom analysis toolsets designed to support our NetApp equipment customers.

Henry Ford built a company based on a very simple philosophy, Bill Ford is currently struggling with the problem of a corporation that has lost its owner operated customer focus. Zerowait will continue to focus on the customer’s needs. As the founder and president I can assure you of that.

When Partners Compete Customers win!

From Toasters the mailing list of NetApp’s users – a way to get better pricing on NetApp equipment. Make IBM & NetApp compete with each other!
We just went with a few IBM boxes here. We have 40 or so Netapp boxes. The determining factor for us was the price. They undercut by well over 100k on what we bought.

Henry Ford said – “Competition is the keen cutting edge of business, always shaving away at costs” Two sales organizations fighting for your NetApp filer business can save you a bundle!

And now for something completely different.

My buddy Greg’s amphicar has been swimming!

“If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.” Lewis Carroll

A couple of times a week I will get a call or be talking to a prospective customer who has a massive problem in his eyes. NetApp has just told them that they must upgrade their storage infrastructure because maintaining their old equipment will just cost a fortune. Upgrading is the salesman’s obvious answer to the customers problem. When they call Zerowait they are told that there is third party maintenance available and that using virtualization front end enables them to make a large storage pool without going don the road that NetApp is suggesting.

The point is that there are many other roads available to NetApp customers who don’t need to upgrade on their NetApp salesperson’s timetable. Vittualization and transferable licensed filers enables them to get a lot more bang for their storage bucks.

Many of my friends own BMW cars. After the warranty expires they all complain about the price of service from their BMW dealers. They usually turn to an independent mechanic. At Zerowait we understand this problem and you can depend on NetApp for reliability, but you don’t need to use their parts, service and support.