NetApp Discontinues SMB Storage Line - NetApp Responds
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Julie Parrish, NetApp’s vice president of worldwide channel
sales, says NetApp will focus resources on the vendor’s FAS2000 platform, and
will release “channel-only
FAS2020 NetApp Select Bundles that will provide our MSE customers with
enterprise level performance at a mid-market price point along with easier
ordering options,” Parrish says. She adds that NetApp will continue to support the
current S family customer base into 2012.
By consolidating this product platform, NetApp
solution providers will have what Parrish calls a more “market-competitive set
of products based on NetApp’s unified storage architecture,” and also a more
seamless upgrade path to higher-end NetApp storage products as customers’
businesses grow.
But Clifford believes many NetApp solution providers won’t
see it that way, and will instead look to other vendors. He says many solution providers
will feel betrayed after investing time and resources to deliver solutions
based on the S family, and won’t want to take a chance that NetApp will burn
them again.
“The cost and time inherent in the process of building a new
client, convincing them that certain products are the best fit for their needs
is extensive,” Clifford says. “If you went through all that only to have them
discontinue the product – that’s just unbelievable,” he says.
Kornfeld says solution providers were shocked when the product
was eliminated, since they’d invested so much into driving sales to their
customers.
“It’s like, ‘I have this product now – I paid for hardware,
software, maintenance, and now you’re telling me I have to rip and replace?’”
Kornfeld says.
Of course, this decision does open up avenues for Clifford’s
firm to go after disgruntled NetApp customers who are looking for an
alternative vendor, such as Compellent, with whom the Davenport Group partners.
“I can tell you that these customers will have a disinclination
to go back to a vendor that’s burned them,” Clifford says. “That said, we do
see this as an opportunity and we will be putting plans together to identify
some that client base and reach out to them,” he says.
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