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Don't like droopy results, NetApp? Develop server-side SAN

Declining revenues becoming a common theme

Comment: What the Vulture sees

The Vulture sees NetApp having no effective riposte to server-side SAN architectures such as VMware's VSAN and EVO: RAIL, and the hyper-converged server/storage/networking products from Nutanix, Simplivity and also Maxta and Gridstore.

Every server-side SAN is a physical SAN array sale lost. NetApp's mainstream array competitors are getting into this area:

  • EMC with EVO: RAIL and EVO: RACK in development
  • Dell OEM'ming Nutanix
  • Cisco in deal with Simplivity
  • HP's StoreVirtual 200-HC product

Lenovo and Fujitsu are bound to do EVO:RAIL-type products – they sell more servers that way.

Our take here is that NetApp needs to get into the server-side SAN market as fast as possible. It is behind its competitors and losing deals, indeed being cut out of deals because it has no viable server-side SAN product.

So come on then, buy Nutanix (and toss a bomb into the Dell OEM deal) or buy Simplivity and strengthen the relationship with Cisco. If there's a bidding war with Cisco, so be it. Outbid Cisco and be the first to link a server-side SAN/hyper-converged system to a networked array. Think hyper-converged ONTAP.

Why?

NetApp may not be able to grow its ONTAP customer base against the concerted attacks by all-flash array vendors and startups; hybrid array startups; better-than-Engenio HPC/big data/scale-out arrays like that of DDN; cheap software-based arrays from VMware and its cohorts; Nexenta and the like; as well as the siren calls of the public cloud sucking up data from enterprise data centres.

Its ONTAP mothership faces attacks on multiple fronts – just as Dell, EMC, HDS, HP and IBM do – because the one-size-fits-all SAN/filer array product model is no longer fit for purpose. They're doing something about it, but NetApp isn't.

The likelihood with telling someone who is in denial is that they won't listen. Well, NetApp, darn well listen.

You've had several quarters of revenue decline and the changes you're seeing in the market are structural, not, repeat not, cyclical. It's innovator's dilemma time, write large and on multiple fronts. What you gonna do? Deny it's happening? Retreat into the mothership?

Go on, your competitors will just love that approach. Carry on being deaf and blind as long as you like (they'll say), while all doing something different from you.

Sure, you have to safeguard mothership ONTAP revenues, but that doesn't include failing to adopt new tech when needed.

Wake up. Smell the coffee.

Buy in to the server-side SAN product space and start developing an alternative growth path to the networked array now. ®

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