Q&A: NetApp CEO Takes Aim At SMBs, EMC

CRN: What's behind NetApp's push into the SMB space?

WARMENHOVEN: We think [enterprise-class solutions] are applicable to the midsize-business space. The customer need is there, we think we have the technology solution for that need, and it’s an attractive market opportunity. So we might as well go participate.

We've had some experience in taking our FAS250 or FAS270 and almost giving it to a medium-sized business with 100 employees. But they're overpriced for most medium businesses. The entry price is about $20,000. That's a lot of money for a small or medium business. Our goal is to get to an entry point of about $5,000 and at the same time provide [customers] a storage platform that handles all of their storage needs--a four-times drop in price while preserving most of the core functionality.

CRN: When you gave the FAS250 or FAS270 to those midsize businesses, what was the result?

WARMENHOVEN: Oh, they loved them. They actually loved them. And they gave us feedback on what they wanted. They like the notion of high-performance disk drives for their primary storage, but they'd like to do a blend inside the box of high-performance and cheap drives, and do in-the-box copy. So that's built-in on the $5,000 array.

They also told us what to do about the user interface. It's very simplified, tuned to a Windows environment. Most of these environments are dominated by Windows only, including file services, SQL Server, Exchange. So it has the look and feel of a Windows extension. A very simplistic administrative interface. [They didn't want us to] just cut the price but make it an attractive, easy-to-deploy solution for medium businesses.

How small? We're not trying to go after mom-and-pops. The boxes scale to multiple Tbytes. We're thinking the target market initially is probably largely professional-services firms like law firms, architectural firms, accounting firms or a doctors' cooperative. It can be used in other business environments, but I think the ones that are data-intensive, that really need something like this, are in the professional-services space.

CRN: Does that mean you are targeting the EMC AX150 space?

WARMENHOVEN: Oh, we're right on top of it. As we go around recruiting VARs and tuning our message and our advertising placement, you'll see a fair amount of vertical messaging in there around professional-services firms.

The AX150 is not a complete solution. It's only a SAN solution, or iSCSI. It doesn't do the [NAS] file services very well. Ours is a combined solution for all kinds of access needs: SAN, NAS, iSCSI. iSCSI and NAS are built into the basic product, with SAN an additional cost item. Especially given Microsoft's push toward iSCSI, the basic unit, over Ethernet, should support all your Windows devices for both file services, SQL Server, Exchange and all the rest.

CRN: Is this built with the Microsoft Windows Storage Server OS?

WARMENHOVEN: To a certain degree, it's going to compete with Windows Storage Server. But [the operating system is] Data ONTAP. A typical SMB today would probably need one or two AX150s with a Windows server on the front end to make the combined product that we'd be competing with [using a single appliance].

CRN: So one StoreVault will take the place of two AX150s and a Windows server?

WARMENHOVEN: A typical configuration: one AX100 or AX150 for the file services, another one for the SAN or iSCSI environment, and some fraction of those as a second volume using ATA disk for recovery purposes. It could be three, with the in-the-box copy function.

CRN: With the StoreVault, you can do the NAS, the iSCSI and the Fibre Channel, all in the same box at the same time?

WARMENHOVEN: All in the one box at the same time. You can put Snap Manager for Exchange and Snap Manager for SQL on there. All the snapshot capabilities for file servers. Flexible volumes for overprovisioning and efficiency.

CRN: With the new products, what is your message to SMB VARs?

WARMENHOVEN: Enterprise value at a small-business price point. I mean, it's a value statement. Our view is, they're struggling with the same data management issues that enterprises are. But they've got to solve those challenges in a more cost-effective manner. We think we've got that enterprise-class position now in a scaled-down value that they can afford.

We want to make it clear this is not a normal NetApp product. In fact, it's StoreVault by NetApp, not NetApp StoreVault. [At the sales kickoff] the executive who has this business unit reporting to him is going to tell the sales guys, 'Look, what you need to know about this product is what a priest needs to know about sex: Be aware it exists, and don't touch it.'

CRN: Will IBM OEM the StoreVault?

WARMENHOVEN: No, that is not available to them. It's not covered in the OEM agreement.

CRN: That's a NetApp decision?

WARMENHOVEN: No. When we did the OEM agreement, nobody knew what the future held. The OEM agreement was confined to the product families existing at that time.