Zerowait High Availability Blog

Cyberlaw and the Future of Cloud Storage

2012-01-31T17:12:00.002-05:00

Several of our customers have been asking us questions about the viability and future of public cloud storage based on the recent government shutdown of MegaUpload. The concern is that, due to the malfeasance of another customer on a shared cyberlocker company, your own corporate data may be unavailable when you need it.

I forwarded several questions from our customers to our Attorney Philip Corwin, one of the leaders in the field of Cyber Law ( www.vlaw-dc.com ). Phil’s answers highlight the uncertainty surrounding the future of public Cloud Storage, as a result of recent actions.

1) Can the DoJ take down any cloud storage provider without any prior notification to the legitimate users of the storage service? If so, how do legitimate users get their critical data access restored?

The DOJ will provide no advance notice to the users or operators of a domain and associated file-hosting/sharing service it believes to be engaged in unlawful criminal activity. The DOJ has made it clear that it has no near-term intent to restore any files to Megaupload.com users – that such users should not have kept their only copy on a remote service. It is unknown whether and to what extent the DOJ is reviewing files on the seized servers in a search for additional evidence of criminal activity. Some (primarily non-U.S.) Megaupload users have threatened to sue the DOJ for return of their files but no such action has yet been brought and there’s no telling how it might fare; in any event, no near-term relief is likely.

2) If our company is using a cyberlocker service, for back up and archival usage and the DoJ impounds the storage servers, how quickly can I get my data from the DoJ if I need to a restoration?

As noted above, the DOJ has given no indication as to whether or when it may permit any user of Megaupload.com to have access to and recover their files from the servers that have been seized.

3) What is the differentiation of a service provider like MegaUpload and Amazon S3 in the DoJ's definition? Can the DoJ pull down our Amazon storage due to another user's data storage usage practices?

It is not at all clear from the Megaupload indictment while it was criminally charged while other very similar services – such as Rapidshare and MediaFire -- have not been, yet (as we have seen with domain seizures undertaken by the ICE division of the Department of Homeland Security, once a new criminal copyright enforcement tactic is employed it will likely be used again in other instances). One key element may have been the allegation that Megaupload paid users to upload infringing content in the past, although they had discontinued their “rewards” program at the time the criminal complaint was lodged. Amazon’s Cloud Drive is a no-frill cloud storage service with a 2GB limit on individual files and no file sharing function, so it is much less likely to be used for infringing purposes and become the target of a DOJ action.

4) If a public access storage provider can be shuttered by the DoJ for one or two suspect cyberlockers , can a Colo Facility or a Network Provider also be shuttered?

Any entity that is knowingly and willfully engaged in large scale online infringement for profit can be a potential target of a DOJ enforcement action. Network service providers do enjoy secondary liability immunity under the DMCA’s notice-and-takedown procedures safe harbor, but only if they expeditiously remove infringing files and refrains from any activity that constitutes direct infringement.

5) Is our data loss insured in the event of a felony or RICO action by the government when it takes down a public access storage provider?

That would depend on the exact terms of your insurance policy. But even monetary compensation cannot replace seized files, so it is best to retain at least one copy of all stored and shared files on hard drives under your direct control.

6) Would you recommend that customers move their data to secure internal clouds, based on the new legal uncertainties surrounding public cloud storage services up time guarantees?

If you can afford to do so a private cloud under your own control would be the safest bet. If that isn’t feasible, at least one copy of all files placed on remote servers should be saved on your own devices. And there will be a need for much greater due diligence investigation of file hosting and sharing services to determine whether they are likely targets of criminal enforcement actions that include website shutdown and server seizures.

Philip Corwin’s Website is www.vlaw-dc.com and he is Of Counsel to Greenberg + Lieberman www.aplegal.com

What is increasing in this list?

2012-01-19T16:18:00.004-05:00

1) Your CapEx budget for Network Storage infrastructure.

2) Your OpEx budget for Operation expenses like service and support.

3) Zerowait's international service and support business for NetApp hardware.

Well, that was pretty easy. Zerowait's service and support business is booming because it is a very rare company that has an increasing IT budget for storage hardware or services, even though demand for storage is increasing all the time. That is why more and more companies around the world are contacting our international offices for service and support quotes for their NetApp equipment. In the USA our NetApp support prices start at just $1500.00 a year.

In 2012 we expect our service business to grow 25% based on the current trend line. I hope that we can discuss your NetApp infrastructure support costs over the next few months. Since the new year we have added new customers who love NetApp's reliability but due to budget restrictions have embraced Zerowait's attractive prices on NetApp filers with transferable licenses.

Additionally, why not try our Free Exception Reporter to help you manage your NetApp infrastructure? Organizations around the world rely on it to help them manage their storage and its associated costs.

Zerowait's business is increasing

2012-01-10T13:19:00.001-05:00

Usually our business gets slower through December and January, but the last couple of months have been a whirlwind of new orders from our established customers and many new customers.

According to our customers our business is increasing for many reasons:

NetApp has increased their hard drive prices, due to the shortage and Zerowait has plenty of storage in house and ready to ship.
NetApp is trying to influence customers to upgrade to 64 Bit versions of OnTap but many customers are perfectly satisfied with their current 32 Bit OnTap versions. or want to purchase NetApp systems with transferable licenses.
In a slow growth economy even the largest companies and government agencies are looking to reduce their support costs, Zerowait services like our Free Exception Reporter can help Filer customers economize.

Most of our new business still comes from the referrals and references of our customers. And as our client base grows, we get more referrals. If you are looking for an affordable alternative to NetApp for components, service, or support please keep us in mind.

EMC drive shortage and price increase

2011-12-22T12:16:00.002-05:00

The uncertainty surrounding the enterprise disk marketplace seems to be causing EMC to mention that it has a disk shortage and there will be a price increase. Dave Raffo in his blog has the following interesting information:

EMC vice chairman Bill Teuber sent an email to customers and partners stating the vendor has eaten price increases so far, but will begin to pass them along to customers after this month. He also wrote that EMC does not expect supply problems because it is the largest vendor of external storage systems, but it has to pay more for the available drives.

“EMC has absorbed the price increases that have been passed on to us and will continue to do so through the end of the month,” Teuber wrote. “Unfortunately we will not be able to sustain that practice. Beginning in Q1 2012 we will be increasing the list price of hard disk drives up to 15% for an indefinite period of time. While we hope that this increase is temporary, at this time we cannot forecast how long the flooding in Thailand will impact HDD [hard disk drive] pricing.”

Another email Teuber sent to EMC personnel said the price increases will be from 5% to 15%. He also wrote the increases will apply to all EMC product lines.

The shortage is expected to affect PC drives more than enterprise drives, but EMC enterprise storage rival NetApp lowered its revenue projection last month because of expected shortages.

Teuber referred to NetApp indirectly in his email, stating “Many of our competitors have already announced drive shortages and price increases and have stated that this will have a material impact on their ability to hit revenue expectations now and in the future.”

Zerowait has been experiencing an uptick in our array shelf and disk storage sales over the last few weeks, but we thought it had to do with the great prices we are now offering on some of our storage specials. But the upward trend in our storage sales business could be because we have a lot of stock which we can ship immediately, while the OEM's may be allocating disks based on their own supply calculations.

We had a great year in 2011, and we are looking forward to next year.

No Disk Shortage at Zerowait!

2011-12-16T10:23:00.000-05:00

Yesterday afternoon I had a long conversation with a customer of ours in California that told me that they were looking at some new NetApp storage equipment, but were told by their Salesperson that the floods in Thailand have rippled through NetApp's supply chain and that NetApp could not guarantee a delivery time frame. This was predicted by NetApp and discussed by Thomas Georgeons:

http://seekingalpha.com/article/308538-netapp-management-discusses-q2-2012-results-earnings-call-transcript

"Looking ahead, the impact of the Thailand flooding can potentially be the biggest swing factor on both our top and bottom line in the second half. The large buyer drives we did, as this was all unfolding, should sustain us through a good part of Q3 but probably not all of it. Although enterprise class drives are considered to be the least impacted, we still anticipate some amount of supply and pricing complexity. We have all heard the predictions of the industry analyst and the drive vendors themselves. Some of the information is conflicting and most of it is changing daily in regards to scope and ultimate impact."

We are working with this customer and several others to help them get through their end of year storage requirements with transferable licensed filers, and shelves of disks that we have in stock and ready for shipment.

We want to help loyal NetApp customers maintain their equipment, and we can help them grow their NetApp infrastructure even during the disk shortage. If you need storage during the shortage, please give us a call at one of our international offices .

Economic Uncertainty? Zerowait’s NetApp support business is booming

2011-12-07T10:30:00.001-05:00

2011 Is shaping up to be the best year ever for Zerowait’s independent NetApp support business. We have already surpassed last year’s sales of our Zerowait Parts Assurance contracts on NetApp equipment from our offices in the USA, UK, and Australia. We expect to see our growth continue next year due to economic uncertainty. At Zerowait we understand that our customers are under severe budget pressure to control their storage infrastructure costs, and with our customers help we have come up with several support programs which help our customers control their NetApp storage growth and support costs.

Recognizing that post warranty support and extending time in service for systems reduces new unit sales, I am occasionally asked by storage analysts focused on NetApp how much of an effect Zerowait has on NetApp’s new product sales. I don’t believe there is any way to calculate how many NetApp customers have put off a system upgrade due to Zerowait’s support in any single period. However, over the last decade Zerowait has built a dynamic, thriving, international business in third party support for NetApp equipment. And our customers in the financial, entertainment, health and government sectors throughout the world continue to recommend our company to their peers.

Whether you need an additional storage shelf, transferable licensed system, or a support contract, Zerowait will work with you to meet your support and budget requirements.

Zerowait SimplStor – Affordable Disaster Prevention

2011-11-28T10:01:00.001-05:00

Over the years I have advocated that organizations embrace a Disaster Prevention model instead of a Disaster Recovery model. Using server load balancers and some multiple MX records it is relatively easy to create a high availability web presence. Creating a high availability solution for the critical data behind the firewall is also getting easier as disk capacity and network bandwidth increase. Using legacy high availability equipment provides an easy second tier solution and based on the response of our customers, Zerowait’s SimplStor is a great tier three solution for tape replacement.

The European division of EMC has a pdf available that illustrates the issues surrounding Disaster Preparedness.

Across Europe, 49% of companies are obligated by either insurance policies or regulatory requirements to have a disaster recovery plan. However, with the right backup and disaster recovery approach, companies can achieve cost-savings from insurers. Just over a quarter of the organisations surveyed were offered reduced premiums by their insurance provider depending on their IT systems backup/disaster recovery strategy.

Unraveling tape: 40% still depend on tape
but majority are looking to replace it
The research found that businesses are spending, on average, 10% of their IT budgets on backup and recovery, and 29% of businesses do not feel they are spending enough. For backup and disaster recovery purposes, 40% of companies still rely on tape, with an average annual cost of €74,000 on transporting, storing, testing and replacing tapes. Where tape is used for disaster recovery purposes, 10% still have an employee take home a copy of the backup tapes with them.

Overall, 80% of organisations using tape are looking to move beyond it, with the top reasons cited as:

Speed of restoration 39%
Faster backups 33%
Lack of durability 26%

EMC has done a service to the industry with this report, and it highlights the costs and problems very well. If you think the costs of an EMC solution exceed your budget I hope you will consider Zerowait’s solutions. We can provide your organization an affordable alternative for your Disaster Recovery plan in Europe, Australia, or the USA.

SC11 - NetApp Transferable License specials

2011-11-18T11:05:00.006-05:00

This week I was at the Supercomputer show in Seattle visiting with our customers and friends. I ran into people Zerowait has been doing business with all over the show floor and it was hard to walk down an aisle without bumping into someone I knew. Repeatedly, I heard about how our customers and friends were having a hard time coping with expanding storage requirements and shrinking storage budgets.

Based on the conversations I had at the show on Tuesday, I emailed back to our office and the marketing department created a special based on the transferable licensed filers that we have available, and distributed it on Wednesday. The customer response to the specials has been enthusiastic and many of our customers want expedited delivery and installation.

If you are looking for an affordable NetApp Filer with transferable licenses please call one of our international offices to discuss you exact configuration requirements and the delivery schedule you require. Whether your company is forecasting a great 2012 or looking at how to muddle through, Zerowait can help your organization get the enterprise class NetApp storage you need at a price your management can't ignore.

Three cheers for an affordable three tiers

2011-11-10T14:26:00.001-05:00

The path to a successful storage archive solution should not start with a Root Cause Analysis. Looking back and pointing fingers is often the easiest path to take, but reviewing your storage strategy and current infrastructure may reveal a very easy and affordable data protection strategy. Archiving to tape is a great solution but it is not a 100% solution; tapes get lost, data gets corrupted and often there is an expensive time lapse between a discovery of data loss and its recovery. Keeping all of your data on tier (1) arrays is expensive and does not make sense for rarely accessed data. Thanks to our customers’ requests for an affordable end to end solution, Zerowait now has a complete storage solution for customers who love their Filers and are looking to get rid of their tape headaches.

Many of our NetApp customers would like to use NetApp equipment as their tier (2) storage, since it allows them to use the same interface and tools on their tier (1) storage, minimizing management issues, but the cost of new systems is too high to make this work. For these customers Zerowait provides readily available off-lease NetApp systems with transferable licenses to build affordable tier (2) storage solutions. Many customers locate these systems in remote back-up sites, and our customers snap mirror updates between their Tier (1) NetApp systems and off lease NetApp tier (2) systems to achieve a reliable archive strategy.

The next tier for many customers has been tape, but quite a few of our customers have decided that they are tired of the warehousing headaches and rush delivery costs of their tape archives and want to reduce their tape costs and frustrations. They are replacing all or most of their tape with Zerowait’s SimplStor for tier (3) archival storage. Using NetApp’s tools, our customers can mirror their data between NetApp filers in multiple locations and then copy the data to a SimplStor tier (3) archive using standard software tools. SimplStor costs about the same as tape, but provides instant access when there is the requirement for a quick restoration of data.

Zerowait‘s customers around the world are able to satisfy their requirements for an affordable high reliability storage strategy. Our customers have embraced a strategy of data tiering strategy using new NetApp equipment for tier (1) highly accessed data, off lease Filers for tier (2) and remote mirrors, and SimplStor for tier (3) archival storage requirements. If you have chosen NetApp for your tier (1) storage, why not use transferable licensed NetApp equipment your tier (2) storage? It is an obvious cost effective solution. Our customers in the Animation, Science and Petrochemical business helped us design SimplStor and now are our biggest customers for the product. They knew they needed a reliable tier (3) solution and they recognized that Zerowait could provide the enterprise support they required. Thanks to our customers‘ ideas Zerowait now provides high reliability hardware, service and support for all three tiers of enterprise data. Please contact us if you want to discuss how Zerowait can provide your organization outstanding Quality of Service at a reasonable price.

November Storage Clearance

2011-11-07T09:05:00.006-05:00

Many of our customers are at the end of their budget cycle and asked us to help them get the storage they need at a price they can afford before the new year. We put together these specials to help our customers weather the economic storms. It certainly seems that whether the economy is going up or down storage demand continues to grow.

Zerowait will be attending the Super Computer Show in Seattle next week. We will be visiting with many of our Animation and Big Science customers. We hope to see you there.

Zerowait begins building a channel organization

2011-11-01T16:32:00.008-04:00

Wilmington, DE (PRWEB) November 01, 2011

Zerowait Hires Lauren Lueders as Director of North American Channel Sales -Increasing Demand for Low Cost Archive Prompts Move into channel

"Our reseller partners need to be able to offer their customers total solutions that help solve critical business needs. Cost and support are two of the most critical components, and SimplStor delivers"

Zerowait today announced the appointment of Lauren Lueders as Director of North American Channel Sales, responsible for creating and rolling out channel sales for the SimplStor product line in the US and Canada. With extensive experience gained over the last 17 years bringing new and exciting storage products to market, Lauren last worked with Syncsort developing their South Central territory. Prior to Syncsort, Lauren worked with Pillar Data Systems, Dell, EqualLogic and Avnet in various channel sales management roles.

Mike Linett, President of Zerowait said, “We are very excited to have Lauren join our management team; her mission is to create a SimplStor channel that will provide excellent earnings for our partners and outstanding value to their customers. SimplStor’s combination of open source/off the shelf low cost storage with tier one support offers our customers tremendous value. SimplStor's growth in the marketplace has been steady and strong since we introduced the product line in 2010. To better service all of our customer requests for SimplStor Lauren will be building the SimplStor channel from the ground up with select partners offering the highest levels of integrity and customer service."

Ms. Lueders added, “Over the past two decades I have worked closely with reseller partners helping them build profitable storage practices with solid product offerings. I joined SimplStor because I saw a tremendous need for low cost archival storage solutions that still provide Tier one, world class service. In today’s economy, organizations are being forced to do so much more with so much less, and storage requirements continue to grow exponentially. Our reseller partners need to be able to offer their customers total solutions that help solve critical business needs. Cost and support are two of the most critical components, and SimplStor delivers.”

About Zerowait: Headquartered in Wilmington, Del., USA, and with offices around the world, Zerowait is the worldwide leader in independent service and support of NetApp filers. Zerowait solutions include off-lease fully licensed NetApp systems and the new Zerowait SimplStor line of single-name space archive storage. Storage administrators throughout the world rely on Zerowait to provide affordable solutions to the skyrocketing costs of data storage. http://www.zerowait.com

Another day in DC

2011-10-25T13:41:00.001-04:00

: Even the government can save money!

Last week we went to DC to meet with a few clients who are looking to expand their Data Storage without busting their budgets. We discussed how Zerowait helps organizations around the world with our legacy service for NetApp equipment and also the ins and outs of acquiring NetApp systems with transferable licenses. One of our Federal clients is very interested in our SimplStor products for their on line archives and tier 2 /3 storage.

Many Federal departments and agencies are Zerowait customers. And it was really fun to go to the Pentagon!

Saving the government money is everyone's business.

How are you going to reduce your Storage Costs?

2011-10-11T10:48:00.001-04:00

Our customers are telling us every week that they want to simplify their data storage and network infrastructures. Overwhelmingly they feel that the best way to accomplish a reduction in complexity is by removing pretentious proprietary software and hardware vendors from their supported systems. They need to reduce costs without affecting their high reliability data access. Is it possible to reduce costs while data storage and content delivery requirements continue to grow?

When it comes to storage most organizations find out fairly quickly that the vast majority of their data has not been accessed in the past 90 days, and much of it has not been looked at in over a year. Executives are asking their IT staff’s “Why is this storage being kept on the most expensive storage in the organization?” Before the 2008 Financial Panic the answer was typically “It is easier to keep all storage on the primary disk although it is expensive, we require less staff.” In technology simplicity often trumps cost and when times are good no one was looking at their marginal cost of storage for secondary, tertiary and dead data. Putting everything on your recently purchased EMC or NetApp storage solution made things easy. But technology has moved on, multi vendor storage maintenance, interoperability, and support is not as complex as it was just a couple of years ago. As many of our customers have suffered staff reductions, Zerowait is now helping them manage their storage infrastructures and helping them retain the high availability they need at a cost they can afford.

Can your organization easily reduce the cost and complexity of your data storage assets and infrastructure? There are plenty of alternatives available now that will allow you to reduce the cost of your archival storage. Clearly all organizations view their storage assets differently based on history, experiences, and cost. There have been plenty of books, and hundreds of articles written on data storage classifications, and I am certain there will be many more written.

I think everyone can agree that organizations have multiple tiers of storage, although they classify them very differently. Whether you are looking to cut your costs by using cloud storage providers, outsourcing, off shoring, or a managed service provider, there is one thing you must be certain of, your organization absolutely must have access to your data storage assets to succeed. Without data access your organization won’t have the competitive edge it needs to survive in the global marketplace.

Zerowait can help your organization classify your data, reduce your costs, and maintain high availability data access.

Storage solutions for tight budgets

2011-10-07T14:56:00.000-04:00

Zerowait has a tremendous stock of NetApp equipment in our warehouses across the globe and this month we are featuring several specials from our NetApp inventory and also on our SimplStor product line. Please click on the image below for more information on the products featured this month.

Intersting Oracle ZFS press release

2011-10-03T16:37:00.001-04:00

The Oracle Trade show is this week in San Francisco and NetApp is a Premier sponsor of the show. I'll bet the Oracle Press release is making for some interesting conversations with customers at the NetApp booth.

"Oracle's Sun ZFS Storage 7420 Appliance delivered 2x the performance
at less than half the cost per SPC-1 IOPS of NetApp's FAS 3270A on the
SPC-1 benchmark (1)."

I made a collage of the different images available on the Web about the press release and the show.

If Oracle's ZFS solutions are truly 1/2 the cost and offer twice the performance of NetApp's current systems I believe that many NetApp customers will be forced to review their IT storage budgets. Our customers include many budget minded IT staffs that use Oracle on NetApp equipment that Zerowait supports and this announcement will certainly get their attention.

NetApp equipment has many features that make their storage equipment versatile and reliable. One reason for Zerowait's continued growth in the NetApp service business is because our customers like the reliability of NetApp, but not the cost of upgrading their equipment on a three year cycle. Zerowait offers these customers an affordable high availability way to extend the life cycle of their NetApp equipment.

If Oracle begins to offer trade in incentives to Oracle users who migrate their storage off NetApp gear I think Oracle will get some good traction in the marketplace.

Zerowait turned the model upside down

2011-09-30T14:55:00.001-04:00

Over the last two weeks I was traveling around the USA visiting customers in NV, TX, AZ, and CO. It is a lot of fun to visit with customers and hear them tell me how Zerowait has made their storage management and maintenance tasks easier and more affordable. As regular readers know, Zerowait has specialized in the niche of NetApp legacy support for almost ten years and we have been working with NetApp equipment since 1998. Over the years we have built up a large and loyal customer base, and now our NetApp support customers are adding our SimplStor product line to their Storage infrastructure on an ever increasing basis.

Last week I was meeting with a customer in the Phoenix, AZ area and he told me that their storage budget for 2012 already includes Zerowait's legacy support for their NetApp equipment and a SimplStor for tape replacement.

I was in Denver, Colorado talking to a customer earlier this week and he said that "Zerowait has turned the storage model upside down." We laughed about that comment and I asked him to explain why he said that. From our customer's point of view Zerowait is a service company and the introduction of a hardware platform by a service company is unique. I doubt if it is unique, but it is unusual.

SimplStor is the culmination of conversations with our customers who wanted a long term, reliable, storage solution that did not lock them into the proprietary vendor's upgrade cycle. By using high reliability proven commercially available components and best of breed open source software we created a storage platform that answers the needs of our international customers.

Whether I was talking to customers on an individual basis or in groups at the SEG show in San Antonio, our customers were enthusiastic about our company, services and products.

Delaware's Governor visits Zerowait!

2011-09-14T10:39:00.001-04:00

: Governor Markell Visits Zerowait

Delaware's Governor Markell visited Zerowait's HQ today to learn more about our NetApp Storage support , technology, and our fast growing SimplStor product line. We discussed the amount of international business we do and how we are growing our business even in these difficult Economic times through our focus on our international market niche. The Governor's team was interested in our technology and services and in particular how Zerowait can help the big banks that are located in Delaware save money on their storage infrastructure as their storage requirements continue to grow.

Governor Markell's team highlighted how Delaware has a great location midway between DC and New York and they were impressed how a company started in Delaware has grown into an international business, and liked the fact that Zerowait's Delaware built products were being used in the Australian VFX business.

It was great having the Governor visit our facility today.

Storage Industry Consolidation Continues

2011-09-08T09:07:00.001-04:00

Storage Industry Consolidation Continues

I read an article today that BluArc was purchased by HDS. We have several customers in the Media and entertainment businesses that have some BluArc in their storage environments.

“TOKYO | Thu Sep 8, 2011 1:30am EDT

(Reuters) – Hitachi Ltd (6501.T) said on Thursday it has bought struggling California-based network storage company BlueArc Corp in an all-cash transaction after a five-year OEM partnership, in the latest such move to take advantage of the yen’s strength.

Hitachi did not reveal the cost of the acquisition, but Japan’s Asahi newspaper said it was about $500-600 million.”

It will be interesting to see what Hitachi does with the product line and the support of the product over the next few years. The acquisition highlights another reason why our customers who worked with us on the development of Zerowait’s SimplStor product line were emphatic in their desire that we build and support an open source non proprietary Operating System and File System as primary features and benefits of SimplStor. Our customers understand that the expense and maintenance of Proprietary Operating Systems and File Systems adds to their costs. What seems like a great feature in a proprietary software or firmware can become a liability when the code is no longer supported.

Storage support growth

2011-09-06T14:43:00.001-04:00

I saw an interesting article today written by Chris Mellor in which he speculates on why NetApp’s market share may be declining.

Firstly, NetApp has slipped from second to third place in the rankings compared to the previous quarter. It had a 13.5 per cent share then but has only 12.8 per cent now; whereas IBM, with whom it has changed places, has grown from a 12.2 per cent share to a 13.7 per cent one.

It is not a significant change as yet, but as the article explains it is an interesting one. Coincidentally, Zerowait is experiencing a significant increase in our NetApp support service and support contracts and many of our new customers are turning away from NetApp support and upgrades because they don’t see the value add in NetApp’s forced upgrades anymore.

As the overall macro economy continues to wobble, we see more and more customers looking to conserve cash. Zerowait provides two easy ways for NetApp’s customers to conserve their IT budget dollars.

First – Zerowait’s NetApp support provides our customers a simple way to get continued value out of their aging high availability storage assets. We are still supporting NetApp systems that are over 10 years old and they are still serving data reliably.

Second – Zerowait’s SimplStor product line is being embraced by more and more of our NetApp customers as a complementary and fiscally responsible way to store lower tier data. Many of our customers are keeping tier one data on their NetApp infrastructure but putting tier two and beyond on our SimplStor products.

If you are looking for an alternative to NetApp’s high priced storage products, licenses, and support why not give one of our offices a call to discuss your storage issues and infrastructure. Zerowait’s reliable and affordable alternative solutions have been embraced by companies around the world.

As an added bonus for a limited time we are offering our Exception Reporter for free to help you manage your Filers.

What do the best known companies in Oil, Power Tools, & Disk Drives have in common?

2011-08-23T13:26:00.000-04:00

They all use Zerowait’s SimplStor products for their fast growing data storage requirements. Storage is growing across all business sectors in response to regulatory requirements and the data retention policies that continue to blossom. These companies all recognize the value of our SimplStor products and enterprise storage services.

Our customers recognize that storage can be easily tiered to help them manage their growing storage costs. Using SimplStor our customers can contain storage costs and maintain their high availability service levels that their corporations require.

SimplStor delivers.

Whether you choose Red Hat or Fedora for the O/S - SimplStor provides reliable, well known architecture. High quality off the shelf hardware means low acquisition costs. And SimplSupport, our integrated monitoring and notification utility, means tier one support, to ensure the reliability you require, while keeping support costs in line. And this simple low cost solution still fits up to 90TB in 4U. SimplStor is the solution to the ever increasing requirements for data retention.

Zerowait's Business is up!

2011-08-22T08:42:00.001-04:00

There was an article in Saturday's Wall Street Journal about NetApp and the problems they are having in the Federal space.

"By ROLFE WINKLER

Tech investors must be hoping the sector is merely suffering a case of the debt-ceiling sniffles. Unfortunately it may have caught recessionitis.

When storage company NetApp said Wednesday that sales hit a wall in July, it was just the latest to blame the federal government, a huge buyer of tech gear, for slowing sales. Other companies that have cited a stingy Uncle Sam for slower growth include Dell, Cisco Systems, network equipment-makers Brocade Communications and Blue Coat Systems. Hewlett-Packard also cited weak public-sector spending as a reason for its poor outlook.
[Techherd]

Some think of NetApp as a canary in the proverbial coal mine since, in August 2007, the company surprised investors by warning of a broad slowdown in orders among big business customers. The recession began a few months later.

Notably, at that time NetApp said that the strongest parts of its business were with the U.S. federal government, as well as Germany and Northern Europe. But this time the public sector, never mind Europe, isn't offering a backstop. Even if business customers have so far held to spending plans, William Blair analyst Jason Ader worries that government austerity will cause ripple effects on private investment as the economy slows.

The federal government isn't the only one cutting back on tech spending. NetApp also said the financial services sector, another huge consumer of tech gear, was broadly weak. That is likely bad news for other tech firms for whom finance companies are key buyers.

NetApp cited the debt ceiling as a reason for the slowdown. So some might argue that because the crisis was resolved, growth will bounce back quickly. The Congressional supercommittee now tasked with deficit reduction might have something to say about that."

NetApp's hardware service and support prices remain high, and we think that is the main reason that more and more Federal NetApp Filers are being put under Zerowait Support.

Can you justify your tape costs anymore?

2011-08-12T13:39:00.002-04:00

I’ve noted in recent posts the increasing interest in as a replacement/complement for expensive tape backup systems. At only $20,000 for a base 68TB system, SimplStor makes disk to disk backup a viable alternative to tape. Using SimplStor as a nearstore device, you reduce your backup windows, reduce the number of cartridges you need since your dailies will now be on disk, and unless you need a very old copy, greatly reduce the time and effort to do a restore. Factor in the reduced cost of administration now that far less tape work is being done, and SimplStor quickly pays for itself.

Our staff is putting together a paper on the costs of tape backup, and the early numbers are pretty frightening. It can easily run more than $40,000 per year in admin and consumables to backup less than 10TB of data. Purchasing a SimplStor system vs all those tape cartridges will put money back in your budget, while reducing the complexity and time involved in properly backing up your data.

Now, thanks to our leasing partner, we can make SimplStor even more affordable. You can lease our 68TB SimplStor server for less than $10 per TB per month (SSC-36-68 server, $637.76 per month, 36 month term, $1 buy out). Make it a 250TB system and the cost drops to less than $7.50 per TB per month (1 x SSC-36-68 server, 2 x SSA 45-90 add-on shelves, 248TB, $1857.84 per month, 36 month term, $1 buy out).

Zerowait in the Australian news .....

Zerowait wins at Fuel VFX

Third party NetApp support specialist Zerowait has had a local win, with special effects company Fuel VFX acquiring one of its SimplStor products.

Fuel has worked on films including Captain America: The First Avenger, Iron Man 2 and Thor and, according to the Zerowait blog, uses “…proprietary tiering software developed in house by Fuel VFX, volumes on the 4U, 68TB unit provide nearline access for scripts and a library of film assets. In addition, the SimplStor is used to provide nearstore volumes, reducing the time of the backup window for Flame suites (now disk to disk), with the tape library now attached to the SimplStor.”

The blog quotes Dylan Penhale, Fuel’s Chief Technical Officer, as saying : “We knew SimplStor offered excellent value and density, but we’ve been pleasantly surprised by its performance. Transfers have been faster than we expected, offering better performance for our users and helping to further shrink our backup windows.”

The cost of doing business

2011-08-08T16:39:00.001-04:00

As a business owner I am acutely aware of how much it costs to run a business, and that it costs more to hire employees and provide them the benefits they deserve than it used to. Since a lot of our customers are in the Financial and Medical sectors of the economy discussions on the implications of Dodd Frank and the effects of the new medical rules and mandates on the costs of doing business are increasing. I often hear that our customers are being caught between allocating budget money for productive purposes or for mandated regulatory compliance.

In 2008 the Small Business Administration published a study on the cost of compliance with federal regulations:

http://archive.sba.gov/advo/research/rs371tot.pdf

“The portion of regulatory costs that falls initially on businesses was $8,086 per employee in 2008. Small businesses, defined as firms employing fewer than 20 employees, bear the largest burden of federal regulations. As of 2008, small businesses face an annual regulatory cost of $10,585 per employee, which is 36 percent higher than the regulatory cost facing large firms (defined as firms with 500 or more employees).”

Note that these numbers do not include the cost to meet state, county and municipal regulations and rules.

In these sectors with ever increasing costs, everyone recognizes it’s getting harder to hire and maintain a great staff to maintain their high availability networks and storage infrastructures. We’ve heard from our customers that our low cost systems and support release budget dollars to pay staff and meet the ever increasing costs of maintaining each employee. Now, a growing number of customers are outsourcing their storage administration tasks to Zerowait, avoiding the regulatory burden and costs of hiring additional employees while continuing to provide the data access their customers require.

No matter how the global economy changes there are always going to be reasons for organizations to economize. Zerowait is focused on providing the services and products our customers need at prices that enable them to reach their goals.

Storage solutions for the budget crunch

2011-08-04T14:35:00.000-04:00

For most of this week I was visiting clients in North Carolina. Almost all of the clients I met have an expanding storage requirement but a shrinking budget. The chill of austerity has finally hit storage budgets.

Zerowait offers our customers several solutions that help them maintain their current storage and add additional storage even in these difficult economic times.

1) Several of the customers I met this week are using their R200′s, FAS3020′s and FAs3050′s for archiving and are not looking to upgrade, additionally they can’t afford NetApp’s support contracts – which might not even be available after the end of the year fro some systems. Zerowait’s Next Business Day hardware support contracts for NetApp Filers start at just $1500.00/yr and are a viable alternative for customers who are happy with their 32 bit NetApp storage infrastructure.

2) Transferable licenses are a great way to get the NetApp features you need at a price you can afford. Many clients I met with have taken advantage of Transferable Licensed Systems to get the NetApp systems and storage they need at a price that they can afford. Zerowait has a large variety of Transferable Licensed systems available, call our offices in Europe, USA, or Australia if you need an affordable NetApp storage solution quickly.

3) Zerowait’s new SimplStor product line is quickly gaining attention from storage administrators around the world. SimplStor starts at just $20K for 68TB and easily expands to a Petabyte.

If your company is struggling with your storage requirements under a tight budget, Zerowait is the answer!

Zerowait SimplStor installed in Australia

2011-07-26T10:19:00.003-04:00

Sydney, Australia (PRWEB) July 25, 2011

Fuel VFX has added Zerowait’s SimplStor NAS archive to its storage architecture. Using proprietary tiering software developed in house by Fuel VFX, volumes on the 4U, 68TB unit provide nearline access for scripts and a library of film assets. In addition, the SimplStor is used to provide nearstore volumes, reducing the time of the backup window for Flame suites (now disk to disk), with the tape library now attached to the SimplStor. Dylan Penhale, Chief Technical Officer, said: “We knew SimplStor offered excellent value and density, but we’ve been pleasantly surprised by its performance. Transfers have been faster than we expected, offering better performance for our users and helping to further shrink our backup windows. ”

Laurence Jones, Managing Director of Zerowait Pty, added: “Fuel VFX is the first of the Australian Digital Effects companies to install SimplStor, but based on conversations we have had with others in this community we know requirements for low cost high capacity disk archive are pressing everyone in media creation. SimplStor’s price/density ratio, with tier one support, makes it an ideal solution for these applications.” Added Mike Linett, President of Zerowait: “We began working with Fuel VFX over a year ago on their Tier One NetApp Storage. With the opening of our Sydney office, they realized we were committed to providing outstanding service in Australia, and their purchase of SimplStor shows their confidence in our ability to provide business critical support.”

SimplStor offers easily extensible NAS disk archive storage for less than the cost of tape. Combined with off lease NetApp systems, enterprise class support and offices in the US, Europe and Australia, Zerowait offers customers worldwide the cost saving solutions they need to meet today’s shrinking IT budgets.

About Zerowait
Headquartered in Wilmington, Del., USA, and with offices around the world, Zerowait is the worldwide leader in independent service and support of NetApp filers. Zerowait solutions include off-lease fully licensed NetApp systems and the new Zerowait SimplStor line of single-name space archive storage. Storage administrators throughout the world rely on Zerowait to provide affordable solutions to the skyrocketing costs of data storage. http://www.zerowait.com

About Fuel VFX
Fuel was founded in 2000 with a vision to create a creatively-driven, innovative visual effects studio that could inspire both clients and crew. Fuel offers full-service visual effects, CG animation, design and post-production services, including a unique and dedicated colour-grading suite. Fuel also boasts a senior, international technical team to help solve complex sequences. Feature film credits include COWBOYS & ALIENS, CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER, THOR, IRON MAN 2, X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE, THE SPIRIT, THE TREE and AUSTRALIA. Commercial clients include agencies M&C Saatchi, Publicis Mojo, DDB, Clemenger BBDO and Production Companies Good Oil, Plaza, Photoplay, 8 Commercials and The Feds. Following Fuel’s work on THE SPIRIT, the company has continued its work with the legendary Frank Miller on commercials for Gucci fragrances via RSA London. Other credits include commercials for clients such as Toyota, Heineken, Johnson & Johnson, Sony, McDonald’s, BMW, Nissan, Wrigley’s, Canon and Visa. http://www.fuelvfx.com

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Read the full story at http://www.prweb.com/releases/2011/7/prweb8644036.htm