Simplifying Data Management
A couple of blog entries back, I talked about how "EMC uses Information Lifecycle Management" as the top-level statement of everything that they do. Although their particular choice of phrases has caused quite a bit of confusion in the industry, I do believe that it's a good thing for companies to have a top-level statement that helps people understand what the company is about.
At NetApp, our big picture statement of what we do is "Simplifying Data Management".
A recent article about complexity in electronic gizmos caught my attention:
Simplifying data management helps IT avoid this struggle. I know there isn't much in large corporate data centers that would qualify as truly simple. These are giant, complex environments. Complexity is especially serious in the storage world, because the amount of data being kept is growing so fast. The more we can "simplify" the better, even if we never actually get all the way to "simple".
One of the things I'm most proud of about NetApp is that customers often tell me how much easier it is to work with NetApp equipment than our competitors'—easier to install, easier to provision a new LUN, easier to replicate data. Even though we are the 4th largest vendor of Networked Storage (SAN, NAS and iSCSI), we are the 2nd largest vendor of replication software that protects data by making remote copies. Given our size in storage systems, we have much more than our fair share of replication. I believe this is because configuring replication for most storage systems is so complex that people use it less than they'd like, and we've done better.
Okay—I'd better stop now, before I turn this into an advertisement. My real point is that I like "Simplifying Data Management" as a quick summary of NetApp. It captures something that we care deeply about and focus much of our effort on.
At NetApp, our big picture statement of what we do is "Simplifying Data Management".
A recent article about complexity in electronic gizmos caught my attention:
Half of all malfunctioning products returned to stores are in full working order, but customers can't figure out how to operate the devices, a scientist said on Monday.The article is about consumer products, but I believe it also applies to computing equipment in the business world. The article goes on to say that the average consumer will "struggle for 20 minutes to get a device working before giving up." In the business world, I know that IT people often struggle for much longer than 20 minutes, but in the end sometimes they do give up. I think this is one reason for "shelfware"—software features that people purchase but never install.
Simplifying data management helps IT avoid this struggle. I know there isn't much in large corporate data centers that would qualify as truly simple. These are giant, complex environments. Complexity is especially serious in the storage world, because the amount of data being kept is growing so fast. The more we can "simplify" the better, even if we never actually get all the way to "simple".
One of the things I'm most proud of about NetApp is that customers often tell me how much easier it is to work with NetApp equipment than our competitors'—easier to install, easier to provision a new LUN, easier to replicate data. Even though we are the 4th largest vendor of Networked Storage (SAN, NAS and iSCSI), we are the 2nd largest vendor of replication software that protects data by making remote copies. Given our size in storage systems, we have much more than our fair share of replication. I believe this is because configuring replication for most storage systems is so complex that people use it less than they'd like, and we've done better.
Okay—I'd better stop now, before I turn this into an advertisement. My real point is that I like "Simplifying Data Management" as a quick summary of NetApp. It captures something that we care deeply about and focus much of our effort on.
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