Now before I go any further I must say that both at one of my previous employers and my current employer I have been a very happy NetApp customer.
I feel that RMS is standing over me as I write this…..

What seems like a long time ago now I went to see RMS (Richard M Stallman) talk at Glasgow Caledonian university as he was receiving an honorary degree from the university. As I imagine he always does RMS taught the key points of why information and software should be free to all people. If you wish to understand more about his views they can be found here.

I have never forgotten that speech nor what I was taught there and while it has sometimes caused me discomfort I have always tried to encourage the companies I work for to do the same, some have been more open to this than others.

Now as I am sure people are aware recently one of the major challenges we have faced is finding a storage system that can scale not only technically but in terms of cost as well. I believe we had found a solid partner in Network Appliance until very recently. As usual a few days ago I was reading /. and found this.

I then decided to do some further reading and found the blog postings by both the NetApp CEO and the SUN CEO. The impression I get from the available evidence is that more than anything this is a marketing exercise, however the SUN CEO does have a valid point in that NetApp have held on to their software for a long time and not really done anything innovative that I can see recently. They have always pushed storage systems in what they can do with the current technology however putting together heads which are basically over priced PC’s with NVRAM and Infiniband cards and selling them with shelfs made by someone else and installing a UNIX based software stack which each feature costs another £10k license to use. This is not innovation, it is just providing a reliable product at the price the market will bare. Eventually companies like Left Hand Networks, Datacore and Pillar will fully catch up and be able to offer the same facilities at a fraction of the cost. I have to wonder if NetApp has already seen this in their future and have decided to go down the litigation route. I hope not as we have all seen how well that ended for SCO (here, here and here).

What ever happens I am very glad to hear that SUN are going to be at the FoWA as well as my good self and I hope to have a chat with them about being in the same business….serving our customers (not paying for a team of lawyers next cruise).