Simplivity - anyone use them?
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@cakeis_not_alie said in Simplivity - anyone use them?:
@Breffni-Potter Who says SimpliVity wants to enter the SMB space? Anyone telling you that is nuts.
Notice that last line. This was Simplivity's first post here. So we were basing the SMB focus on that statement.
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@scottalanmiller In our patch in IL/WI we will be happy to work with anyone. We have enterprise customers as well as smaller 2 node only shops and I feel they are both worthwhile. If my leadership says someone isn't big enough to deal with, I would listen, but I ran these in production for 2+ years as an end user (yes enterprise) and had them in branch offices (similar to a SMB IMHO) and they performed very well. Cost less than traditional for me.
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@cakeis_not_alie said in Simplivity - anyone use them?:
In the realm of "caters to poverty tier clients" basically the only solution that anyone should trust is Nodeweaver, and I still don't understand why they're so damned cheap.
@stefuk had me look at them and the price wasn't that cheap. It was cheap, yeah, but like 90% of bigger players. Not like 30-50%.
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@virtualrick said in Simplivity - anyone use them?:
@scottalanmiller In our patch in IL/WI we will be happy to work with anyone. We have enterprise customers as well as smaller 2 node only shops and I feel they are both worthwhile. If my leadership says someone isn't big enough to deal with, I would listen, but I ran these in production for 2+ years as an end user (yes enterprise) and had them in branch offices (similar to a SMB IMHO) and they performed very well. Cost less than traditional for me.
I've done enterprise branch office, it's very different than an SMB, in most cases. ROBO and SMB have a lot of overlap, but a lot of differences, too.
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For example, and this is probably the most extreme that I can think of, a top ROBO solution is the Dell VRTX. But the VRTX is considered totally worthless in the SMB market. Totally different needs.
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@scottalanmiller Then SimpliVity needs to be kicked for it. Twenty lashes with a wet noodle and no internet for a week!
SME? Yes. SMB? No. SimpliVity doesn't play down at my level, except for my very largest clients.
Let me be perfectly clear: SimpliVity started with a MIDMARKET focus and moved up channel.
Now, we could have debates about what is SMB, what is Midmarket and what is Enterprise, but I have actual definitions to use for this: https://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/061.nsf/eng/02804.html
The midmarket is defined by the Canadian government as 100+ employees. And that's about right for where SimpliVity starts to be a real consideration. I'm going to say whomever believes that is "SMB" is out of touch with the real mass market and what SMB means, especially outside the USA.
And maybe that's the kicker. US definitions and "pretty much the rest of the world" differ a lot here. Important to consider.
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@scottalanmiller I respect that, I did state the street prices and the basic specs, you guys can decide where the line is drawn. I would bet that some SMB are a fit and others are not. Our tech is what's different, so when shopping, just know that we are more than servers and storage in a box.
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@virtualrick said in Simplivity - anyone use them?:
@scottalanmiller I respect that, I did state the street prices and the basic specs, you guys can decide where the line is drawn. I would bet that some SMB are a fit and others are not. Our tech is what's different, so when shopping, just know that we are more than servers and storage in a box.
Yup, I appreciate the price... and that's why we need it, otherwise we can't gauge where it might fit. @cakeis_not_alie felt that SMB was a bad fit, so just showing him where we got the idea from.
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@cakeis_not_alie said in Simplivity - anyone use them?:
@scottalanmiller Then SimpliVity needs to be kicked for it. Twenty lashes with a wet noodle and no internet for a week!
SME? Yes. SMB? No. SimpliVity doesn't play down at my level, except for my very largest clients.
Let me be perfectly clear: SimpliVity started with a MIDMARKET focus and moved up channel.
Now, we could have debates about what is SMB, what is Midmarket and what is Enterprise, but I have actual definitions to use for this: https://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/061.nsf/eng/02804.html
The midmarket is defined by the Canadian government as 100+ employees. And that's about right for where SimpliVity starts to be a real consideration. I'm going to say whomever believes that is "SMB" is out of touch with the real mass market and what SMB means, especially outside the USA.
And maybe that's the kicker. US definitions and "pretty much the rest of the world" differ a lot here. Important to consider.
What I"ve always heard in the US (except for IBM) is that SMB is 500 and fewer. But ten or fewer is SOHO. So 10-500 for SMB. Still a loose number because employee count is not a solid gauge of size.
IBM considered SMB something like 5,000+ which is why they were so confused when they tried selling on Spiceworks.
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@scottalanmiller Which is my point: there is a massive disconnect between what vendors and pretty much anyone else means when they say "SMB", especially
- If they ARE an small business
- If they aren't American
Which is why I point to https://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/061.nsf/eng/02804.html as my definition of terms. Because it's an official source, with statistics that can be discussed and is relevant to me, personally, as a Canadian.
So based off of the definition of "small" contained in that source, I stand firm on my statement that SimpliVity doesn't have - and won't for quite some time - an SMB play. If you want to use an IBM definition of SMB, they sure they do.
But maybe, for the sake of sanity, we should all agree to the definition of terms if we're going to have a poo-flinging contest over who is priced right, or using the right pricing approaches for a given market segment.
Otherwise, we might as well just shred some dictionaries and throw the confetti at eachother whilst screeching incoherently and beating our chests.
Ook, ook, ooooooooooooooook!
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Even with the definition that SMB is 10-500, and SME is 500-2,000 (which is what was taught back when I was trained) it doesn't change the fact that most SMBs would still be under 100 because the smaller SMBs are the larger percentage within the group.
I don't like an SMB break line at 100, because the behaviour of a 40 person company and a 150 person company and a 220 person company are essentially identical in IT. The bigger ones just spend more.
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@scottalanmiller I should also point out here that in Canada, which is a fairly advanced economy, only %0.14 of businesses are larger than 500 employees. If your definition of the market is that SMB is < 500 seats, the midmarket is > 500 seats and the enterprise starts north of 1000 (or 5000) seats, then you're shrinking "enterprise" down below a fraction of a percent of all businesses.
Which, when you consider that basically every "thought leader", salesdroid, marketdroid and CEO dismisses non-enterprises as "irrelevant" makes me want to start punching things.
It's bad enough for only %0.14 of businesses to be "relevant". I am a strong advocate of not shrinking the number of "relevant" businesses, if possible. If only so that I don't feel even less like a mote of dust in an uncaring and actively hostile universe.
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@cakeis_not_alie said in Simplivity - anyone use them?:
@scottalanmiller I should also point out here that in Canada, which is a fairly advanced economy, only %0.14 of businesses are larger than 500 employees. If your definition of the market is that SMB is < 500 seats, the midmarket is > 500 seats and the enterprise starts north of 1000 (or 5000) seats, then you're shrinking "enterprise" down below a fraction of a percent of all businesses.
Yes, in the US it is accepted that something like 98% of businesses are SMB, and far less than 1% are enterprise. Only a handful are considered enterprise. Fortune 500 and little else.
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I've worked for 1,400 seat hedge funds making many, many billions of dollars per year (the company, not me personally) and they would never call themselves enterprise. They were mid-market but called themselves SMB because they felt so small.
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@scottalanmiller Okay. shrug. This is your clique man. I've said my piece, I've defined my terms, and I've linked to the statistics and rationale behind choosing those terms. I don't care what anyone else in any of the other cliques wants to call things. Anyone who cares to consider what I have said can use the definitions as I have listed them to understand what I said. That's all that matters to me.
The rest is just ook, ook ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooook
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@cakeis_not_alie said in Simplivity - anyone use them?:
@scottalanmiller Okay. shrug. This is your clique man. I've said my piece, I've defined my terms, and I've linked to the statistics and rationale behind choosing those terms. I don't care what anyone else in any of the other cliques wants to call things. Anyone who cares to consider what I have said can use the definitions as I have listed them to understand what I said. That's all that matters to me.
The rest is just ook, ook ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooook
Hey, it's what the US used to educate us on in IT training stuff in the late 90s. I didn't make up the terms. It might not be ratified by the Canadian government, but it was drilled into us at some point.
Here are the US standards for it. Notice that they consider Small to be 250 or fewer in some industries, up to 1,500 and fewer in others.
https://www.sba.gov/sites/default/files/files/Size_Standards_Table.pdf
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@scottalanmiller Hey, I like definitions, that's great! I don't actually care whose terms are used, or why. All that I care about is that we're using the same terms, so that when we all argue, we're arguing about the same thing, and not past eachother.
"This is SMB" or "this is not SMB" is a really pointless bit of chest-thumping nonsense unless we're all using the same definitions of these extremely fluid-to-the-point-of-almost-meaninglessness terms.
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@cakeis_not_alie said in Simplivity - anyone use them?:
@scottalanmiller Hey, I like definitions, that's great! I don't actually care whose terms are used, or why. All that I care about is that we're using the same terms, so that when we all argue, we're arguing about the same thing, and not past eachother.
"This is SMB" or "this is not SMB" is a really pointless bit of chest-thumping nonsense unless we're all using the same definitions of these extremely fluid-to-the-point-of-almost-meaninglessness terms.
Which really, I think vendors might need to lead that charge. For example....
Vendor 1 does VDI: SMB is defined by seats.
Vendor 2 does Accounting Software: SMB Is defined by revenue
Vendor 3 does wireless: SMB is defined by production floor square footage -
@scottalanmiller Maybe. But bigger than I'm willing to worry about here. Specific issue was "is SimpliVity a bucket of assbutts". Answer: "no, they're not."
The rest of this is to existential to worry about for me right now.
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I think it's a useful tool for quickly conveying information, though. We don't want the IBM effect where they totally lose touch with their audience or wind up in a community where they have no place.
