Zerowait Corporation

Email Compliance Conversation

I received a call from a customer who was worried about regulatory compliance for his email. He had looked into a solution and was suffering sticker shock from the price quote he received. I asked him how many email accounts he had, and whether he was running a spam filter or not. I told him ” Spam storage costs money” and told him we use a Barracuda to eat our spam. We like it so much we sell the product now. I asked him how many terrabytes of email storage he had and he was not certain. This concerned him as he did not know how big his problem was, or how fast it was growing. I asked him if he wanted us to provide tape back up, or disk to disk at our remote location. He said that the recent tape loss events are quite scary. “No Problem” I said, ” what we will do is create a three leg email solution. Primary email is at your location, followed by a copy to our location and then a back up to our remote site. No tape, all encrypted on spinning disk and no spam! ” I said. He said “You can do that! ” . I answered “Yes, when do you need it implemented.” Once we get his storage requirements figured out we will be able to provide him a monthly price which is exponentially cheaper then buying an in house solution.

Zerowait provides customized storage services for clients currently, and it is a growing part of our business. Often your must vexing storage problems are every day solutions we provide! Zerowait has the engineered solutions and we can solve your problems NOW.

On Sunday, I had lunch with Zerowait’s first customer. We still do work for them and
we had to get together to discuss a project we are working on for them. We have been working with this customer for 16 years on various types of projects. The company has recommended us to various other companies over the years, and we have picked up projects here and there from their recommendations. In addition to business, we talked about our parents, and our families and what we are doing for the summer holidays. Over the years we have met each other friends, and it seems that everyone knows everyone else now, so when we work on a project together we can trust that everyone will do what is expected, and we make sure the deliverable is as described in our discussions. There are clear economic benefits to this relationship for everyone because of the trust we built up over time.

As a private company, Zerowait does not have to meet Quarterly numbers for analysts, we have to make our customers happy year in and year out. Of course, we do have to make money. It seems like a large part of a successful business formula is to make your customers happy and be a reliable resource and they will recommend you to other customers. Everyone at Zerowait understands that we can’t win every deal, but we all try our hardest to provide our customers with the best quality, prices, service and support that we can. Two large NetApp upgrade shipments on Tuesday went to customers recommended by other customers. We certainly appreciate your kind words and recommendations. THANK YOU!

Last week a customer spoke to me at length because they need a NetApp storage specialist for a few month assignment. He wanted to know if we could help them find a person for a 6 month assignment which is all they expected their storage consolidation and migration to take. I spoke to him and listened closely, and we came to the conclusion that they did not want actually to hire someone for six months but actually wanted to find someone who could help them for a period of about six months while they implemented their changes. After about another thirty minutes on the phone it turned out that all that was really required was someone on call 24/7 and someone who could come in when they needed it.

Our customer already knew that his engineers depended on us for their technical support but never realized that we provide consolidation and migration services also. The customer pointed out that most companies he deals with always push their professional services and that Zerowait does not. We laughed together about our lack of marketing skills for our professional services, but he agreed that he would keep Zerowait professional services his little secret.

Zerowait provides NetApp storage migration and consolidation services . There you go – the hard sell!

Last week I was having breakfast with a customer who was complaining about the limited lifecycles of most IT equipment. He went through the usual list of problems that are caused by manufacturers who only support the current and last generation of products. He knew that we were supporting many generations of NetApp products and he complimented us for saving customers a ton of money by allowing them to maintain older equipment for the medium term, but beyond the Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) . He wanted to know why we don’t cover more brands of equipment.

The reason is simple, our engineers can ‘t be the best in multiple brands, so we specialize in one thing, and it is NetApp. Many companies sell & support many different brands of equipment. When we sold new NetApp equipment, we only sold NetApp storage. Well over 90% of our business is service, parts and upgrades for NetApp equipment. Zerowait is commited to providing outstanding NetApp service and support, and our customers share the rewards of our dedication to this purpose.

On Thursday we were arranging a shipment from the Netherlands to Zerowait in the USA, and also putting together a shipment that will be going to Amsterdam. Additionally, we were packing an order to go to Hawaii, and got out a couple of overnight shipments to companies in the lower 48. Our Engineers were working with clients on migrations and back up strategies in the USA , Russia, and the UK. The diversity of our clients is astonishing, but we recognize that each one of them has an urgent need to keep their high availability data storage network running within a budget. Another typical day at Zerowait, providing outstanding service, support and upgrades to NetApp customers throughout the world. I hope you will keep us in mind the next time you are thinking of upgrading your NetApp system.

A customer called us up recently who had been quoted a price of over $16,000.00 by NetApp for NBD hardware support for his Filer. He was absolutely non plussed over the quote NetApp gave him, and wanted a competitive quote. I explained that we certainly could provide a competitive price quote, but I did not see how NetApp could possibly be charging that much for hardware support for the 3 year old system he was describing. We quoted him significantly less and it looks like we have gained another satisfied customer.

The incident reminded me of a meeting I had in September of 2000. I was meeting with the CIO of a Fortune 100 company and he told me that often it comes down to a decision to buy hardware and software support or to keep talented engineers on staff, budgets are tight and tough decisions have to be made between staff and infrastructure. I sympathized with him and explained that Zerowait’s competitive hardware support prices give IT managers the budget flexibility they need to keep talented staff and maintain their high availability hardware. Of course, readers of this blog already know that! Zerowait provides an alternative to NetApp’s high prices, we’ve been doing it for years and our loyal customer list keeps growing.

It looks like there might finally be some price competition coming to the enterprise storage market thanks to competitive market forces and it should help NetApp’s customers. I don’t think I have ever seen a more fragmented product marketing strategy by one company.

Over the last few weeks we have seen some very interesting comments from NetApp on their pricing and their marketing strategy. First there was Dave Hitz saying NetApp will lower prices to gain market share “We have a single software system, and we can cut our prices to gain market share,” he says.

According to NetApp’s Leonard Iventosch “Before, we dialed for dollars, set up appointments and sent the lead to the partner,” he said. “Now we will get the lead, follow up with the customer and the channel partner, and make sure the customer stays engaged.” So it looks like the customer will be able to negotiate price with the partner, but also start shopping with other NetApp sales channels. Where will the IBM OEM versions of the NetApp products fit into the pricing picture? Will IBM sell their OEM versions for less than the NetApp channel and direct sales force? Will customers be able to get competitive bids for the same product from NetApp’s direct sales force and NetApp’s partner sales force, and IBM’s direct and channel sales force?

How will Pillar Data affect the pricing picture especially within the Oracle NAS storage Niche that NetApp values so highly? And now there is competition from Larry Ellison’s Pillar Data – “ $100,000 for 12 Tbytes: This system seems to target a real sweet spot that’s missed by other storage vendors. It’s unusual for us to buy from a startup. But it’s such a departure from the existing storage paradigm that it’s worth it to take a leap.”

It seems like there will be a lot of competition for NetApp’s sales in the next few months. Savvy customers will get quotes from all of the different competing sales forces and take the lowest price, because the service and product will be identical.

Competition is good for the customer, and the coming months look like a great opportunity to grow your storage while reducing your costs. There are several successful purchasing strategies that our customers have used over the years in negotiating with NetApp, but getting competitive prices is always the best.

Yesterday, I received an email from a customer who had been given a quote for a NetApp FAS270. He wanted to know if we could quote him a similar unit. I wanted to know what his application was and what his data growth forecasts were, I also inquired as to the number of clients he had that were going to be actively using the storage from the FAS270. I needed to know these answers so that I could see if there was a good fit between the FAS270 and the client’s needs.

Spec.org provides online test results for NetApp filers and they are quite revealing. For the customer, it turned out that the quick review showed that there were potential bottlenecks in the performance of the FAS270 that could be a show stopper. I suggested he review the results for the F840 and F820. It turned out that these older systems fit his usage and growth profile much better. Additionally , we were able to save him about 50% of his budget over a new system. This is because Zerowait stocks systems with fully transferable NetApp Protocol licenses, ready to ship and configured to your requirements.

Next time you are told that it is time to upgrade your NetApp system, check the specifications and test results prior to making your PO, or give Zerowait a call and we will try to help you increase your NetApp storage while maintaining your budgetary integrity.

I got back last night from a great trip visiting our customers in Europe at the ASCDI
meeting in London. It was my first trip to London and I found it a very nice place, it really did not seem much different from any other major city. If you have time, I recommend going to the Science museum which is behind the Albert Hall. I wish I had another couple of hours to go through it.

Most of the folks at the meeting were interested in how we could help them provide more value to their customers. NetApp is telling their customers that they must upgrade to newer filers and then NetApp’s sales folks tell the customers that the price of service and support of older systems is going to go up so it makes sense to upgrade. It sounds like twisted logic to a lot of our customers.

As readers of our Blog know – Zerowait provides affordable service, support and upgrades for NetApp equipment. We supply Next Business Day (NBD) parts services to many of the Fortune 100 companies who want to keep their older NetApp systems running. So if NetApp is telling you that you must upgrade, why not give Zerowait a call? There are other alternatives to NetApp for service and support .

I just got in this morning from a very busy flying day! The plane I was flying had just come out of a major maintenance inspection. It was in the shop for 6 weeks! One thing experience has taught me is that no matter how good your mechanics are, after a plane comes out of “heavy maintenance” there are a lot of little problems that pop up from having things apart, nothing dangerous, just annoying.

Why do I bring this up here, well I’m learning that filers and storage equipment are the same way. Anytime you re-arrange a system, move a system, or somehow change a system, you will often find little annoying issues that get in the way of smooth operation. Sometimes these problems may not even seem related to the maintenance that was accomplished.

Last week Zerowait got a call from a customer who was having problems with their system. The Zerowait Engineers were also receiving auto support emails from the system, indicating a problem. After many phone calls and dead end troubleshooting, it came out that the customer had recently moved the system from one location to another. During the move a fiber cable got bent or stepped on and was not efficiently transmitting information. No one there suspected that simply moving a system from one location to another could cause such troubles. Once the ever-alert Zerowait engineer heard about the move, the cables were the first things to come to mind. Had the information about the move been discussed earlier, many hours of trouble shooting the wrong problems could have been saved. It is important to give the engineers all the information you have!

Zerowait’s chief engineer also points out that if you are going to use your older shelves with a newer system, many customers have found that the transition goes much smoother if they send their old shelves to Zerowait to blow out old volumes, zero drives and flash new firmware. Basically this will make your old seem new and more compatible with your new system.

In flying I have learned to take a plane out for a few “shake-down” flights, before you set out on any long or important flights. Your IT system might benefit from the same process. Before you trust your newly changed system with critical data, let your system burn in for a few days (a week even), run a few processes with it, check it out and make sure everything is working the way you expect tit should. Once you are confident all is well, you can also be confident that you will not lose critical data.

Always keep in mind that anytime you are making changes to your system, big or small, Zerowait is here to help!