There's been a dysfunctional discussion of capacity guarantee programs over on Chuck's blog. There had been more sensible, independent discussions on the Storage Architect's blog, but that apparently wasn't good enough for EMC - a company without a capacity guarantee program of their own. Unfortunately, Chuck decided to shut down comments on his post, citing an overload of vendor hash - which could continue to go on as long as there is breath left in any bloggers from Netapp.
Chuck's post poses the question - do you want to buy from a doctor or a used car salesman. The suggestion he makes is that EMC treats you like a doctor while 3PAR, HDS and Netapp treat you like used car salesmen.
The doctor picture he used was this one:
Which reminded me of Scrubs - but of course there are other doctor images he could have used:
In case you've been shunning the news, this is Dr. Conrad Murray.
The used car salesman picture was pretty funny:
I'd suggest Chuck is using classic used car sales tactics: "Who loves ya baby? The warranty them guys offer don't protect you from nuthin'. Your engine will blow up the day after the warranty expires. All they want is your munny!"
Still, seeing as how he was linking this image to 3PAR (in one way or another), I'd have hoped he would have used a picture like this instead:
You might not end up buying that car, but you should at least check it out.
Chuck characterizes capacity guarantee programs as not being in the customer's best interests. That would be true if 3PAR, HDS and Netapp wanted to increase the number of unhappy customers they have, but that is just CRAZY EMC thought diarrheaship:
Instead, I'm pretty sure we all want our customers to be very happy with their storage solution:
Yes, 3PAR's capacity guarantee is a way to attract customers, but it's much more than that - it's a way to back up our efficiency claims by putting our money where our mouths are:
RecoveryMonkey had a post recently about FUD and the ridiculous corner case claims storage vendors sometimes make about each other. 3PAR has been telling customers for years that our products are more efficient than theirs and we are now backing it up with our capacity guarantee. It's not FUD, it's not spin and its definitely not a corner case.
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