In discussing with our customers their NetApp and archival storage needs, quite a few have brought up the bloatware that big systems vendors and software vendors are pushing. They want to know why vendors won’t unbundle their software packages and allow them to purchase just the features they need.
Many of our NetApp support and transferable licensed filer customers use a very small set of the features that NetApp provides. Allowing customers to unbundle the package and pick the features they want seems like a customer friendly policy. Instead NetApp prefers a one size fits all approach to their feature sets, which pushes many customers to look for alternative storage and support solutions. We appreciate the business that comes our way from customers that are unhappy with NetApp’s policy of all or nothing.
Speaking of the right tool for the job, many of our support customers tell us that the ability to get straight answers from our support engineers is one the features they like best about working with Zerowait. Our customers call, email and text our engineers all the time; there is no need to go through the call center hassle, our engineers have the authority to take care of most issues without having to go up the management chain. And our engineers don’t have to push a “NetApp knows best” solution; they are free to discuss the best actual solution, not the one NetApp needs to sell today.
The third tool in the Zerowait Pocketknife is SimplStor, which a lot of our customers use as part of their storage infrastructure. We have several customers that use NetApp as their primary storage and SimplStor for their archival and special storage needs. SimplStor is more flexible and far less expensive for the same components than NetApp while offering the same advantages of our enterprise level support and engineering staff.
If you are looking for an affordable support toolset for your NetApp equipment or a storage solution that has only the tools you need please give us a call, or contact us with a time/date to arrange a conference call with you and your team.
