Zerowait Corporation

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.

“Competition creates better products, alliances create better companies.” Brian Graham

With Topio, NetApp and its partners get two key benefits, starting with low-cost disaster recovery, according to Rogers. “This will be quite popular with our customers. Now our NearStore solution can act as a disaster recovery device for competitors’ products. This gives customers a choice to not be held captive to their primary storage suppliers,” he said.

Over the last several years NetApp has tried to make their products as proprietary as possible to captivate their customers. For example, NetApp doesn’t use the standard 16 drive RAID array , like other manufacturers do, they use a custom 14 drive raid array. NetApp doesn’t use a standard canister, they use a proprietary sized canister. These are simple every day products that can help customers save money or lock them in. In every case NetApp looks to hold their customer in proprietary captivity.

A leopard can’t change its spots, and I don’t think customers should depend on NetApp to make it easy to work with their competitors, no matter how nice it sounds to the press and marketing folks. Will NetApp suddenly form an alliance with EMC to help customers? How did their alliances with Hitachi and Dell work out for customers?

Sticker Shock:

The FAS3070 starts at roughly $115,000 for a system with 1 TB of capacity and is available now. According to NetApp, its closest competitor is EMC Corp.’s CX3-80.

I think most people would agree that the closest competitor to NetApp equipment is NetApp equipment that has a transferable license, especially a 1 TB unit. We have plenty available and can easily save you 40% off the NetApp price list. Give us a call – in the USA 302.266.9408 or in Europe at 08000 121 801.

I don’t know of any company that has an unlimited budget for storage anymore.

UPDATE- I got a call from an engineer that said I should point out that if this NetApp system is sold with x276 300GB drives, the 1 TB is all used up in the root volume. Even if it was sold with 14 72 GB drives it would leave only 11 drives for data or about 770 GB RAW and about 420 GB usable after right sizing. $404.00 per gig is a high price for useable storage!

Zerowait has transferable licensed 980’s with a 1 TB available for about $50,000.00 and we can add a TB for about $5000.00 per TB.

Another SNW trade show is over and in the record books.

On Friday, I flew home after the SNW show my first leg was from ISM to LBT, I filed IFR and after take off I was vectored through Orlando’s airspace and then handed off to the Daytona controller. Daytona sent me out over the ocean to the Jetso intersection and then north to Stary and then on to Lumberton which is the halfway point in my trip. I fuelled up in Lumberton and filed my next IFR flight plan back to Delaware. After departing LBT, I contacted FAY approach and the controller asked me if I wanted to go GPS direct to PXT (Patuxent) I said certainly, but mentioned that in the era of the Washington ADIZ it is very rare to get any direct routings any more. Except for a slight change to the Colin intersection, north of Richmond, I pretty much went GPS direct back home. It was a great flight and I had lots of time to think about the SNW show.

I was really surprised by the number of NetApp end users that came up to me and thanked me for my company’s service and support, and also by the number of folks who walked up to me and asked me to send them some more information on our NetApp support services. It was apparent to me that many NetApp users are suffering from Buyer’s remorse, and are looking for alternatives to NetApp’s forced upgrades. EMC’s folks were also interested in chatting with me, since they have a common interest in helping us displace NetApp as a service and support option where NetApp equipment is in place. The folks at 3 Par chatted with me and we spent quite a bit of time together. I have to admit that their 30,000 foot view for the technology they have was pretty interesting.

In the past I have learned that most trade show presentations are about as painful to sit through as getting a root canal, so I actively avoided any presentations no matter how interesting I was told they would be. If something interesting happened the trade press will cover it . I spent my time chatting with customers, vendors and competitors about common problems and solutions. I think that was much better usage of my time when you consider the laughter and cards exchanged and to do lists created.

After it was all over on Thursday night, Jon Toigo, Jeremy and I went to Wendy’s for our celebratory dinner and laughed about the number of analysts, reporters, and marketing types that were floating around the show. I think there were more marketing folks at the show than there were end users. But only SNW knows that for sure.

Of interest to many people in the storage business :

Regulatory language proposed in California by the Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) declares that on or after January 1, 2007, no person shall sell or offer for sale in California, a covered electronic device if the device is prohibited from being sold or offered for sale in the European Union. DTSC will hold a workshop on Thursday, November 9, 2006, to solicit additional input and to update stakeholders on the development of these regulations prohibiting the sale of non-RoHS compliant electronic devices in California.

Date: November 9, 2006

Time: 10:00 AM – 1:00 PM

Location: CalEPA Building

Byron Sher Auditorium

1001 “I” Street, 2nd Floor

Sacramento, California 95814

SNW in Orlando

On Tuesday I flew from Delaware to Kissimee,FL for the SNW show. It was a perfect flight down the east coast at 8000 feet. Yesterday, I went to the show and met with a lot of folks. I was amazed to meet so many people who read this blog. I had no idea. It was great meeting you all ! Mostly the SNW show is a vendor fest, and many of these vendors are suddenly very interested in working with Zerowait. I listened to some of their pitches and was astonished at the claims I heard. I don’t know whether the coming election is having an effect on the storage business. But the politicians and the marketing guys seem to stretch the truth in the same proportions. One customer was listening to one of these pitches with me, and afterwards he said that the storage industry needs an organization like www.factcheck.org to validate some of these claims. Trust but Verify!

By the way, Jon Toigo’s storage revolution meeting was outstanding. Good work Jon!

PS – Adaptec – Thanks for dinner, it was great, and I really enjoyed the discussions!

Storage Network World is in Orlando next week.

The industry likes to gather there and make their boasts and put out press releases. I have been asked by quite a few of my industry peers to stop by, and I probably will because I have important business appointments nearby next week. A lot of our customers in the Southeast are interested in getting more storage value out of their NetApp infrastructures, and are looking at our service and support quotes and also transferable licensed filers.

You can be certain that the big wigs at SNW won’t be talking about:
1) Getting more bang for your invested storage buck.
2) Getting a faster return on your storage ROI.
3) Affordably extending the life of your legacy storage.
4) How to save money with transferable licensed storage.

As Henry Ford said – “Competition is the keen cutting edge of business, always shaving away at costs”

But if that is what you are interested in, drop us an email and I am certain that we can get together. We always look forward to helping our customers and friends save a lot of money when negotiating with their storage vendor. In the last couple of weeks a large company in the Southeast has been using our support quotes to help them get reduced pricing out of their storage vendor very effectively. Competition will do that! Now the purchasing folks at this company are wondering why their storage manufacturer’s prices were so high before we came to the table.

Storage investments
“A penny saved is a penny earned.” Benjamin Franklin

Over the last few weeks there has been a steady increase in the number of inquiries we have received regarding transferable licensed filers. The current stock of filers includes all models of nearstore R100, r150 and r200 models as well as standard filers including the 980’s, 960’s and 940’s. All these filers have transferable licenses and are ready to ship. NetApp provides software support for these filers and Zerowait provides affordable Next Business Day hardware support and installation services.

From the comments we hear from these customers, it seems that many NetApp salespeople are misinformed about transferable licensed filers, and don’t know all the facts regarding them. If you are looking to save money on high reliability NetApp storage, give us a call and we will explain how it works.

Good news for HP!

It is always good to read that a customer is doing well. The folks at HP are some of the nicest and best engineers we deal with. Congratulations!
HP has taken Dell‘s crown for the most global PC shipments in the third quarter of 2006, Gartner has reported.

While most of the press is focusing on the executive suites, and former executive’s books. The people at HP continue to do an excellent job providing technology that works for their customers.