Zerowait Corporation

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!

It seems that inventory management is of interest to a lot of people, many blog readers and Zerowait customers have called or emailed to ask how Zerowait handles a large inventory as well as, service and support systems.

Well, if you look into the history of Zerowait you will see that Mike Linett started out as a Database programmer, working on inventory systems. Mike actually has a degree in this stuff! Michael and the Zerowait staff have written and designed their own systems. They built a completely relational database that keeps track of all inventory prices, and quantities and also interfaces with engineering and support. A lot of customers with multiple support locations require special service and delivery solutions, so they are constantly tweaking the systems in response to specific customer service and support requests.

As Zerowait’s growing family of satisfied customers seems to suggest, Zerowait is committed to providing the highest level of service, parts, and upgrades for NetApp equipment, all at a reasonable price. Efficiently managing inventory is just one part of how Zerowait is able to do it.

Mike and July left for London today, so the rest of the Zerowait staff will be working harder than usual to cover the phone calls, orders and daily business operations that would normally be covered by them.

Today, other than the absence of Mike and July, is a typical Zerowait day. The phone calls started early this morning, as usual the first calls come in from international customers, followed by more local customers and finishing off the day with west coast customers. The topic of phone conversations has run from answering questions about F840’s with transferable licenses, software revision numbers, and the availability of legacy drives for FC-9’s. These are only a few of the typical phone calls that Zerowait fields daily, and this doesn’t even begin to cover the customer support calls, shipping questions, or those “May I speak to the person in charge of copier maintenance?” calls.

I guess what I’m trying to say is Zerowait gets call from Europe, Asia, and the USA, but as busy as Zerowait is, there is still time to hear from you with your questions or concerns. Excellent service and excellent prices make Zerowait an excellent phone call!

Thank you!
All of us at Zerowait appreciate the difficult job our customers have in managing their data storage networks while working within a tight budget. We work diligently to provide our customers with the highest quality of service and support possible. We strive to maintain the most complete inventory of NetApp Legacy parts in the marketplace. Because of the number of customers we have, and the depth of our inventory, we can provide our customers outstanding service, support and inventory stock at a reasonable price. The cycle continues to turn; the more customers we get, the bigger our inventory reserve requirements become , and the more customers we can service and so on.

So thank you for working with Zerowait, we appreciate your business and look forward to working with you as your NetApp storage requirements grow.
Thank you!

OK, I hate to sound like a broken record here, but I just can’t overlook some of this stuff! It seems as if Dave Hitz is contradicting himself again. In this article from Forbes.com, Dave is quoted as saying, “We have a single software system, and we can cut our prices to gain market share,” Yet just back in December SearchStorage.com has this, “The aim is not to disrupt ONTAP customers,” said Dave Hitz, VP and co-founder of Network Appliance. “Think of the upgrade like moving from Windows to Windows NT. There’s a long overlap period … All future development is focused on the next-generation product, but we’ll support both.”

Is NetApp supporting 1 or 2 operating systems? Will the one you are using be the one they drop? What do you think? Make sure you use the link to the right and drop me an email. I really would like to know your opinion.

At Zerowait you will get straigh talk that is both knowlegable and helpful. Give Zerowait a call and talk about your storage needs!

Good Monday to everyone! If anyone, especially Zerowait’s European customers who would like to set up a meeting with Mike Linett, he will be in London this week. Mike will be attending the ASCDI, 2005 EUROPEAN CONFERENCE.

It is a great opportunity for the European Zerowait customers and anyone who might like to be a customer to get to know Mike and July. They don’t find their way across the pond that often. Call Zerowait today and set up an appointment to meet with them; they would love to see you while they are there!

Sun Purchases StorageTek: Possible Implications

Many of our customers are both Sun and StorageTek customers so this acquisition has our interest. Zerowait is concerned about how to help our customers maintain their legacy infrastructures to enable them to get the most for their storage investment, and an acquisition often results in the shrinking of support and engineering staffs of the acquired company. Additionally, when you have influential companies like these joining forces there are typically staff reductions in sales staff of the acquired company. Finally there are the long term branding and strategy concerns that customers should be concerned with for the 3 to 5 year period after the initial equipment purchase. For Sun, in our opinion, this acquisition really represents a purchase of a customer list and a brand—technology and real estate play a lesser role.

As Sun takes over the StorageTek marketing and sales functions, they will be forced to slash staff right after they absorb StorageTek’s contact and customer databases. Similarly, StorageTek’s engineering and technical staff will also be affected because both companies brand assemblies made of commodity parts. The business logic maintains that you can get by with fewer engineers to support them. But this would be faulty logic, and problematic for owners of StorageTek equipment. Indeed, the transition period could mean loss of timely technical services support (changing phone/email contacts, changing personnel, untrained techs), but the bigger danger is that, over the next few years, StorageTek customers risk the loss of the long-term expertise required by their niche storage products. As knowledgeable StorageTek personnel find themselves “let go”, the remaining support engineers will have responsibility for more products; this can mean dilution of product knowledge. Additionally, stocks of readily available spare, replacement or upgrade parts will likely diminish—product knowledge disappearing with it. We see that today with our own NetApp legacy parts: newly minted resellers haven’t a clue about which parts are compatible with which systems; nor are most parts available through manufacturer channels. Thus, infrastructure managers need to factor the elimination of support and spares as part of the corporate “right sizing” into mid-term technology refreshment plans. Zerowait considers mid-term to be 2 to 4 years after acquisition of product. Since this type of acquisition takes between 18 months and 24 months to accomplish, we would suggest that customers begin reevaluating their storage infrastructures soon.

We would expect that there will be quite a few orphaned products as soon as Sun’s folks complete the absorption process. Why? The merger brings Sun’s Storage business into competition with its new acquisition’s storage business. They both sell RAID Solutions that are assembled from parts by Xyratex, Seagate, Intel and Qlogic. The internal politics and elimination of overlapping products will take many unforeseen paths, but you can be certain that many customers will be left with unsupported products because of this merger.

Many of you may remember when Chrysler purchased AMC / Jeep. The AMC cars were quickly eliminated from the product mix. And the Jeeps were changed to use more and more Chrysler parts. The brand remained, but the product changed. Chrysler was then absorbed by Daimler. The Plymouth brand was eliminated, and Chrysler’s employees and staff were decimated. Chrysler’s share of the market has tumbled as it has lost its product’s identity. Plymouth is just a memory. I expect that StorageTek will suffer the same fate.

Here is some good news to start your weekend right!

In a Forbes article about Pillar Data Systems, you can read, David Hitz, cofounder and head of engineering at NetApp, agrees that low-end storage technologies will move up the performance ladder, just as PC technologies did. But NetApp is in on the trend, too. “We have a single software system, and we can cut our prices to gain market share,” he says.

Does this mean that NetApp has been charging too much for new equipment? Can we all call and ask for the Dave Hitz discount? Or are they just going to lower their prices? Inquiring minds want to know.

Zerowait has the equipment you need at reasonable prices now!