NetApp posts $8m loss as its pivot continues. Feeling comfy, George? In its fourth fiscal 2016 quarter NetApp revenues were $1.38bn instead of the $1.425bn predicted at the mid-point of its last forecast, and the company made an $8m loss – the second in George Kurian’s tenure as CEO. The revenues were down 10.4 per cent on a year ago and 0.4 per cent from the previous quarter. A year ago NetApp …
“We've announced the FlexPod lifecycle automation solution[...] that allows you to shrink the time from receiving equipment to serving data to less than an hour. This is competitive with the hyper-converged solutions that are shipping in the market.”
'time to install' isn't the problem hyper-converged solves. Simplicity of operation, removal of complex steps needed to do basic stuff, getting rid of everything below the server, that is where the value is.
The bullet was "project shift".... Once hyper visor vendors saw how easy NetApp made it to replace them...they knew they had to do something about NetApp.
The fact that "project shift" never became a product didnt matter... By that time it was too late.
VMware came up with VSAN which will eventually have same or better functionality than Ontap + making their product sticky...
A couple of years ago when I looked at Hyper-Convergence I didn't understand what it's purpose was. Just put Edge on 3rd party hardware, and you've got nearly the same thing? Cheap hardware, power of ONTAP, what's not to like? If only customers would have bought it...
Or the Frankenstein that was ONTAP + EVO:RAIL. That's HCI, right? Did anyone buy it?
Now I've spent a bunch of time with actual customers who either have, or want, HCI. They don't have armies of SAN admins, they have generalists who just want things to work. Create a lun? Set up a mount point? Configure complex settings? Troubleshoot is it this device, or that device, or this config, or that? No thank you.
"Kurian said a new generation of ONTAP is coming, ONTAP 9...."
And by generation he means:
- Data Ontap 9
- Data Ontap 9 with c-mode
- Data Ontap IX with Dedupe and c-mode
- c9-dot for AWS
- Data Ontap 9 clustered with backward compatibility
- Data 9 Cluster Ontap easy upgrade path
- Data Ontap 9 with flash support
- Data Ontap IX Flashray edition + inline compression
- Data Ontap 8+1 with reliable host connectivity
- Data Ontap 9+ management software premium bundle
- Data 9 tap-on with real premium support (and not just the same level 1 guy as standard)
- Data ontap 10 minus 1 with margin for partners
- Data Ontap 9 with features bundle
- Data Ontap 9 with features bundle & delayed performance issues
- Data 9 ontap with Professional Services Bundle to Really fix your issues
- Data Ontap IX - Support Account Manager Bundle - to ensure you get at least some value from your Premium Support contract
- Data Ontap 9 "Only the CLI really works" edition
- Data Ontap IX with arrogant sales rep
>> He also answered a question about competition from hyper-converged vendors such as Nutanix and Simplivity, and EMC with Vx-Rail: “We've announced the FlexPod lifecycle automation solution which is a capability that allows us to provide a highly automated deployment model for FlexPod customers that allows you to shrink the time from receiving equipment to serving data to less than an hour. This is competitive with the hyper-converged solutions that are shipping in the market.”
The Point of HCI <The Pacific Ocean> NTAP's CEO
That isn't the point of HCI.
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