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.