NetApp peers into the economic gloom
NetApp is refusing to give guidance for the next quarter. You can guess why. CEO Dan Warmenhoven today passed on a forecast for Q3'09. "It is very difficult to predict the depth and duration of the downturn," he said "The uncertainty around customer IT spending intentions reduces our confidence in the validity of our pipeline …
Maybe they should sue Sun for making zfs free instead of trying to fight the economic downturn directly.
Oh, wait ...
Agreed - and the arse-kicking new Sun Storage boxes probably don't help them. Dave HItz on his blog blathering on about hybrid storage boxen, meanwhile Sun have actually delivered, and used SSD in a pretty far-out way to boot.
I made several comments about the long term viability of a company (NetApp) selling the same shit all the other Tier-1 companies were selling but they were each and every one censored by Mr. Vance. He even sent me a few emails about it.
But then NetApp was a big advertiser here on ElReg. I've noticed a big drop in their ads lately so maybe my comment about selling the same polished turd as the next guy will get posted.
" Agreed - and the arse-kicking new Sun Storage boxes probably don't help them. Dave HItz on his blog blathering on about hybrid storage boxen, meanwhile Sun have actually delivered, and used SSD in a pretty far-out way to boot."
Quit smoking crack. NetApp was shipping Hybrid Flash/SSD's (Flexscale) as an add on to their stuff before Sun's Fishy Storage was ever launched.
On Top of that, they haven't released any Spec Numbers for their boxen, and if it's anything like regular ZFS + Slowaris it's going to need a lot of help to catch up with NTAP performance wise.
Oh boy ! Do we smell a Matt Bryant here ! If I get a storage appliance with even 3/4th of Netapp performance at 1/4 th price, and the fantastic diagnostics tool as the bonus, I would take it any day. How much would a Netapp box of 44TB cost,
and then you pay add on for ever feature and every performance module ! Sounds great to me !
performance numbers of the Sun appliance aren't out yet, but from the various videos at the Sun site it does seem that adding SSDs as cache are making quite a big difference, how much we will slowly know for sure. The appliance does not have every feature the Netapp would boast, but not everyone needs all of them, specially when you have to pay separately.
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