News

posted on 12 March 2008 08:29

---

NetApp CEO Dan Warmenhoven signalled NetApp's frustration at its under-performance against its own expectations at an analysts' day yesterday.

Although companies that know NetApp like it a lot most of the 5000 large enterprises that buy storage don't know NetApp. It's total addressable market in 2009 is estimated at $84 billion but it can only serve half of that. Not having enough sales feet on the street is one reason and a 1,000 or so people will be hired in the next year.

In 'marketshare as branded' terms NetApp has a position lower than its marketshare in shipped capacity terms; 11 percent versus 23.4 percent. It is emphatically under-represented in the storage software market with an 8.1 percent share, third place behind IBM (13 percent), Symantec (17.7 percent), and EMC (25.8 percent).

It is either in first or second position in three parts of the storage market: iSCSI, NAS; and storage replication;

One obstacle to better progress is the twin O/S version strategy with DATA Ontap 7G and Ontap GX, the clustered, higher-performance version. COO Tom Georgens (pictured left) said there would a rev of 7G, expected in three months, a rev of GX, expected three months later, and a joining of 7G and GX in a combined version, Ontap 8, probably by the end of the year.

Warmenhoven said NetApp is under-represented in the 'storage 5000', needs to grow at 2.5 to 3 times the market rate, and also needs to increase customer awareness of its presence and capabilities.

[Chris Mellor.]