NetApp is Amazing! Yes, you heard me correctly. NetApp is indeed an amazing company. They were pioneers in networked file storage, made many great products over the years, and did a fantastic job of hiring great people to build the company’s culture. These were the ingredients of the secret sauce that made NetApp special. So why would I ever leave NetApp to join iXsystems?
How do you leave giant, proprietary Disneyland to test the waters with a comparatively smaller, Open Source “upstart” (of 20 years and counting, by the way)? While this might puzzle some, the answer for me was pretty simple. Disruption. And yes, I know what you’re thinking right now, ‘Disruption? That’s original.’ Like you, I understand every company on the market is claiming they are disrupting the storage, network, or compute industry on a daily basis. The onslaught of press releases promising ‘The next great thing!’ is so common we’ve nearly become desensitized to the mere thought of ‘disruption.’ Only in the ego-driven tech industry could companies ever believe that they’re changing the world with each dot release. Well, I can offer some relief here because the beautiful thing about the disruption I’m speaking of is not necessarily a technological breakthrough but a way of doing business with iXsystems.
iXsystems is gaining customers, some of whom are parting ways with NetApp and EMC (now Dell EMC), at such a rapid pace because we offer a highly flexible enterprise-grade solution that meets complex storage requirements without breaking the bank, giving up features, or sacrificing enterprise support. We do this by being the first storage company in the world that Open Sourced our storage operating system, FreeNAS, and it is now the world’s leading Open Source Software Defined Storage OS with almost 9 million downloads worldwide. This model breeds open collaboration and feedback from a strong community of users and contributors to help develop business-ready storage software. Releasing FreeNAS into the wild allows us to also provide you with a battle-tested enterprise product in TrueNAS that provides more features and performance per dollar and continues to surpass expectations year after year.
The best part is we dare you to try FreeNAS because we know that once you do, you too will be asking why am I paying six or seven figures for a logo on a bezel? I left NetApp because I get it. Look, if you are in the 5% of storage projects that require a billion IOPS and limitless scale-out capability we have no problem letting you know you probably need to speak with NetApp or EMC. But more than likely, you probably fit within the majority of IT projects that could benefit from a fully unified hybrid storage system that gives you the flexibility to handle today’s workload and the unforeseen requirements of the future.
The Open Source business model makes sense to me. Growing up near the birthplace of RedHat in Raleigh, North Carolina showed me how Open Source collaboration can change an industry firsthand and the tide is turning as more and more Open Source solutions enter production environments. Does this mean everyone is going to jump ship today? No, not at all, but I saw how iXsystems was still growing in a mostly flat storage market and realized that it was doing something special. iXsystems is disrupting how people acquire and use storage. That’s why I left NetApp, and if you think I’m crazy why don’t you give FreeNAS a try?
Patrick Bullock, Channel Account Manager