StoreVault: Storage for Small Businesses
NetApp has created a new division, called StoreVault, to provide storage systems for small and medium businesses (SMBs). The S500 is our first StoreVault system. It's based on the same Data ONTAP software that we use in our enterprise systems, but with a management interface optimized for SMBs, including simple wizards for the most common tasks. (Pricing starts around $5,000. Maximum capacity 6 TB. Supports iSCSI, Fibre Channel SAN, CIFS and NFS, as well as snapshots and double protecting RAID.)
Enterprise Disease
One challenge of building an SMB product in a company like NetApp is that we focus so much on the requirements of giant enterprise customers, that it would be easy for us to get confused about the needs of small and mid-sized companies. Mid-sized businesses aren't just stripped down versions of big enterprises. They have their own separate requirements, and simply creating a stripped down version of the standard enterprise solution isn't good enough. Our CTO calls it "enterprise disease" when people who have spent too much time focusing on giant customers try to design products for smaller ones. We created a separate StoreVault division in part to protect our SMB team against enterprise disease.
It's not just the product itself that's different. The manufacturing model is different (outsourced overseas), the distribution model is different (two tier to resellers), and the service and support model is different (completely separate from our existing support staff). Throughout the division we do things very differently than for our Enterprise Storage Systems group.
In fact, we've made no effort to make StoreVault available for existing large customers. Our direct sales force can't even sell the StoreVault. Existing customers are certainly free to buy it from an approved reseller, but they should be aware that the enterprise support organization they normally work with won't support StoreVault.
StoreVault is a NetApp company, but the products are distinct from NetApp's other products, much like what Cisco did with Linksys.
Jay Kidd, who is the Senior VP above the StoreVault division, explained it to our direct sales force like this: "What you need to know about StoreVault is what a priest needs to know about sex. It's going on all around you, but it's not your concern."
SMB Pain
SMBs typically have small budgets and little or no dedicated IT staff—almost never any dedicated storage staff—so cost and simplicity are especially important.
Many SMB customers tell us that backup and restore are their biggest pain points. Good data availability and secure backups have become critical because so many SMBs rely on their data to run their business. Try making an appointment to get your teeth cleaned if your dentist's storage is down.
In the future, I expect that regulatory issues will become more important. The fact that thousands of SMBs are subject to Sarbanes-Oxley has only begun to sink-in. As it does, I expect that we will find more and more "enterprise" features that are also critical to SMBs. There are over 10,000 public companies in the U.S. Only the top few thousand are "large businesses", which means that there are many thousands of public SMBs. Plus, many other regulations that apply to both public and non-public companies.
Data ONTAP is a great foundation for meeting these requirements. NetApp has years of experience meeting data protection and management challenges in large data centers, and we have a history since we first began of focusing on simplicity and easy of use. Having one system that supports all the major storage protocols really reduces complexity.
Irony
The big irony for me personally is that small and medium businesses were our initial target market when we started NetApp, back in 1992.Sun and Auspex were already selling high-end networked storage, and our goal was to slip in under the radar by targeting the little guys. The whole point of the appliance model was to reduce complexity to the point that anybody could have one. We called it "Storage for the rest of us." We thought it would also help us sign up resellers, because it would be less work for them to sell and support.
Of course—as so often happens with startups—things didn't go at all as we predicted. Never mind the simplicity, we discovered that technical customers loved our product because it was blazingly fast, and then all these hyper-growth Internet companies started installing us in their data centers, many of them running large Oracle databases on our storage—and, well, the rest is history.
I certainly don't mean to complain about how things turned out! My point is just that I personally find it very gratifying that—after all of these years—NetApp is finally addressing the founding vision.
Enterprise Disease
One challenge of building an SMB product in a company like NetApp is that we focus so much on the requirements of giant enterprise customers, that it would be easy for us to get confused about the needs of small and mid-sized companies. Mid-sized businesses aren't just stripped down versions of big enterprises. They have their own separate requirements, and simply creating a stripped down version of the standard enterprise solution isn't good enough. Our CTO calls it "enterprise disease" when people who have spent too much time focusing on giant customers try to design products for smaller ones. We created a separate StoreVault division in part to protect our SMB team against enterprise disease.
It's not just the product itself that's different. The manufacturing model is different (outsourced overseas), the distribution model is different (two tier to resellers), and the service and support model is different (completely separate from our existing support staff). Throughout the division we do things very differently than for our Enterprise Storage Systems group.
In fact, we've made no effort to make StoreVault available for existing large customers. Our direct sales force can't even sell the StoreVault. Existing customers are certainly free to buy it from an approved reseller, but they should be aware that the enterprise support organization they normally work with won't support StoreVault.
StoreVault is a NetApp company, but the products are distinct from NetApp's other products, much like what Cisco did with Linksys.
Jay Kidd, who is the Senior VP above the StoreVault division, explained it to our direct sales force like this: "What you need to know about StoreVault is what a priest needs to know about sex. It's going on all around you, but it's not your concern."
SMB Pain
SMBs typically have small budgets and little or no dedicated IT staff—almost never any dedicated storage staff—so cost and simplicity are especially important.
Many SMB customers tell us that backup and restore are their biggest pain points. Good data availability and secure backups have become critical because so many SMBs rely on their data to run their business. Try making an appointment to get your teeth cleaned if your dentist's storage is down.
In the future, I expect that regulatory issues will become more important. The fact that thousands of SMBs are subject to Sarbanes-Oxley has only begun to sink-in. As it does, I expect that we will find more and more "enterprise" features that are also critical to SMBs. There are over 10,000 public companies in the U.S. Only the top few thousand are "large businesses", which means that there are many thousands of public SMBs. Plus, many other regulations that apply to both public and non-public companies.
Data ONTAP is a great foundation for meeting these requirements. NetApp has years of experience meeting data protection and management challenges in large data centers, and we have a history since we first began of focusing on simplicity and easy of use. Having one system that supports all the major storage protocols really reduces complexity.
Irony
The big irony for me personally is that small and medium businesses were our initial target market when we started NetApp, back in 1992.Sun and Auspex were already selling high-end networked storage, and our goal was to slip in under the radar by targeting the little guys. The whole point of the appliance model was to reduce complexity to the point that anybody could have one. We called it "Storage for the rest of us." We thought it would also help us sign up resellers, because it would be less work for them to sell and support.
Of course—as so often happens with startups—things didn't go at all as we predicted. Never mind the simplicity, we discovered that technical customers loved our product because it was blazingly fast, and then all these hyper-growth Internet companies started installing us in their data centers, many of them running large Oracle databases on our storage—and, well, the rest is history.
I certainly don't mean to complain about how things turned out! My point is just that I personally find it very gratifying that—after all of these years—NetApp is finally addressing the founding vision.
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