I've asked many customers why they chose to work with NetApp. We've also done some formal market research on the subject. The answers mostly fall into three categories.
In some cases, customers are happy with what their IT infrastructure accomplishes for them, but they want to improve efficiency and drive out costs. NetApp has a variety of technologies to help customers store more data on fewer spindles, and we also use automation to allow more efficient storage management.
In other cases, customers want a more flexible IT infrastructure that lets them respond quickly to changing business requirements. Here the focus is on capabilities like fast and easy provisioning to get new application environments installed quickly, or cloning to get new test and dev environments running quickly. Automation helps here as well, by providing application administrators self-service access to storage system capabilities.
Finally, customers sometimes want an experienced partner to help guide them. This is especially important for customers exploring newer, more innovative architectures based on server virtualization or cloud computing. One customer told me: “We expect you to help us predict the future.”
The thing is, few customers are satisfied with just one of these. Business flexibility may be the initial impetus to consider a new architecture, but they also want to run their IT infrastructure more efficiently. And they also want experienced partners who can help them set their course. Customers may prioritize one area over the others, but they'd rather not compromise on any of them.
This is the inspiration behind our new ad campaign. For most customers, it's not about just one thing; it's about getting them all at once: AND.
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