Over the last couple of weeks I have been visiting customers in Texas and Oklahoma and one customer of ours who went to NetApp to renew support on a FAS32XX filer with minimal storage was apoplectic when he saw the price from NetApp for a support contract. All he wanted to do was put a non-production environment Filer back in a production service environment. So they asked NetApp for a support contract quote. NetApp came back with a quote for over $50K. You could buy a new filer for that. Which is probably NetApp’s plan. Anyway, what caused the outrageous pricing in this case was that NetApp backdated the filer to 2014, when it went off support. Instead of quoting 12 Months, they quoted 33 months, ending in early 2017. Not only did they charge for nearly two years of support the customer would never receive, they also added a reinstatement fee! NetApp should include a prescription for blood pressure pills when they send a quote like that to a customer.
Perhaps this type of predatory pricing makes sense to marketing folks in Silly Con valley. But in the rest of the world folks are looking for alternatives to dictatorial solutions by single source vendors. Zerowait support is the affordable solution for NetApp support. And thanks to price quotes like this from NetApp, our SimplStor storage sales are growing as people look for affordable solutions without the proprietary software lock in.
In an economic environment of 2% GDP growth customers need a vendor that provides long term service and support at reasonable prices, which is our long term goal. In this case our pricing helped the customer control his blood pressure without breaking his storage budget. Another satisfied Zerowait customer.
