Jeff Steiner

We see vendors that temporarily, as you say, get the ability to market themselves ahead of the competition.

But ultimately, you have to back it up.

You have to back it up with real value and real products and real features and a lot of other things.

And this is another thing where I've sometimes wondered if NetApp is not emphasizing what we should be.

And this is snapshots.

Think about what we've got here.

We really were the first to do snapshots in the way that we do.

Yes, you could do a BCV on an EMC array, but that's like a snapshot.

That doesn't count.

And I bought my first NetApp in 1995.

I think it maxed out at eight snapshots.

And I remember when I was so excited when I got that code upgrade and I could do 16 snapshots.

And...

The whole reason that I'm working here now is because I kept on buying NetApp stuff, doing lots of different things with it, and it really all came down to snapshots.

I mean, think about that.

I don't need a backup system.

The storage system is the backup system.

And then SnapMirror at the time was revolutionary because this is a bonehead simple way of replicating data from point A to point B where I don't have to phone the EMC guy to come in and spend $50,000 rebuilding the bin file.

And it's the little things that really count.

And if anything, I would think these are going to count even more because there's even more things to manage and the data sets are getting bigger and bigger and bigger.