Originating Author: David Vellante
Good news for fans of NetApp. The company is aggressively investing to expand its marketshare and is planning to become the number two player in the industry, so it can set its sites on number one. Too bad it's not as easy as spending a few million bucks, getting a new logo and popping some ads in the Wall Street Journal, Computerworld, and NPR-- and NetApp knows this. The company started with a platinum list called the Storage 5000. This is one of those lists you make, because you really can't buy it at any reasonable price. One can't help but wonder how many such lists exist in the storage business and what the combined value of those assets is worth.
EMC no doubt has the most accurate Storage 5000 (or more) in the business. IBM has always been the king of market segmentation and has more data than anyone, but it's unclear how storage-centric its list is and how useful it is in a pure-play storage context. Ditto for HP and Sun. Hitachi, with its heavy reliance on distribution partners HP and Sun, probably has somewhat less visibility on the buying patterns of named end customers.
So what does this magic list mean for NetApp specifically and the industry in general? It means that NetApp has a powerful tool with which to target initiatives and measure success. If the company can demonstrate to itself that there's a cause-and-effect relationship between investment and market penetration, then this list will become a real thorn in the side of competitors that don't have a similar capability.
In the end, however, execution is everything, and NetApp must be careful to not open the door to its most loyal customers while it's going after the unwashed mass of non-NetApp users. The real opportunity is for NetApp to get more sales motion going with those lighter-weight NetApp customers that are probably buying NFS simplicity. The opportunity for NetApp competitors is to test the loyalty of NetApp customers, knock on doors right after NetApp visits new prospects, and try to disrupt NetApp's channel partner loyalty.
Action Item: NetApp's development of its Storage 5000 list is a shot across the bow at the big storage competitors. It is a resource that only the largest storage companies are likely to posses and one that can be leveraged and evolved indefinitely. NetApp competitors need to revisit their own similar assets and evaluate them in terms of accuracy, predictive capability, depth and ease of use.
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