Posts made by virtualrick

@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.

@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.

@Breffni-Potter Actually we have a large presence in UK, in fact we have our HQ for Support for the EMEA region in Cork, Ireland. We do around 47% of our rev outside the us. I'm sure there is local staff for you.

@cakeis_not_alie Didn't know who you were

@cakeis_not_alie Thank you for the support! As I mentioned several of our customers and employees are Very passionate about our tech.

@JaredBusch Understood. When you compare to just the Hosts or servers, the TCO would be poor, however the cost of servers, storage, backup software, backup target, are usually higher as a whole. Throw in DR if its considered necessary, and the cost is usually 200% the cost of Simplivity.

We can replace all of that, and typically we reduce the sockets in the environment. In fact we support essentials plus for a 2+1 meaning 2 in an HA pair at prod and a single node at DR.

My partner and I have had some disscussions around the thread, and we are going to try to config an SMB bundle with a real street cost, it will be heavily discounted (like enterprises get) without the haggle.

If it meets the price point then great. If not then perhaps we aren't a good fit today.

@dafyre Thanks, I am not in a position to change that, however the issue is raised. I will assure you I will not dodge the question when presenting to anyone.

@Minion-Queen Thanks and I agree with every point. Not eating lunch today as I am short on time too I take things a bit personally I'll admit, so your comments are taken to heart. I'm not a person who frequents the forums, so I'm not the greatest at knowing the proper format.

Honestly speaking, I felt I could jump in and turn it around, without really thinking it through. My ego got in the way of my hearing for a bit, as indeed I am just another person. Thanks all.

@scottalanmiller Thanks for that Scott, will do.

@Kelly Thanks Kelly, great insight, and for the record, when I'm asked for numbers I do give them, and will try to influence my peers to do the same.

@scottalanmiller This is great feedback. you are right I cant fix it, but again I feel personally responsible.

@scottalanmiller In that case thank you. We do not want to snub SMB, we value your business. I think you'll find that our data protection is great in that space where dr is a major undertaking and often too expensive, and sys admins have to constantly compete with IaaS offerings. Hopefully, you have the time to give us a look at some point, and I will relay th edata to management, However there may be drivers around publishing a pricebook in a competitive space that we are both unaware of.

@scottalanmiller Understood. FWIW, my sales rep and I have sold to over 60 SMBs and I can tell you there are times when they negotiate better pricing than the enterprise. I have saved a few spice heads some large amounts that they are happy to discuss. Look at Shane Ladd on spice works. He calls me out by name. We don't want to lose partnerships due to cost so we have been very aggressive in assuring that we work with you guys to get to a solution that works. we work hard to help people, not just get something on the floor. It is unfortunate that because of many sales reps shady practices we have to be so guarded, but I get it.

@scottalanmiller I cannot help but feel a bit like I'm being attacked. {salesdick?}

I will assure you the conversation will be moved to our leadership around pricing disclosure to end users. Was here being friendly, I think I'm better off to leave this to the bloggers/marketing folks, but I feel responsible as I should have done the event. Sorry all. Didn't mean to stir up the hornets.

@scottalanmiller I cannot argue, ill simply excuse myself, with you being the victor, Ill up vote your post, but keep in mind I gave pricing in my first interaction with you. I'm the engineer, not the sales rep. This is an issue and you are right on every point.

However, being dismissive of a technology due to a non-negotiated price, without conversation is a questionable practice from my perspective. Are you doing your business a favor?

As an architect and customer I would shop features first, based on business objectives, then if the bill is too high, start having the conversation with the business to set expectations, and discuss alternatives. Not fighting you, just my personal perspective.

@JaredBusch OK Jared, point taken, however, other that relaying upwards that some prospective customers REALLY HATE not knowing a price range, there isn't a lot I can do to change the overall operations in the industry.

There is a reason we like to size the solution and its boils down, that if I tell you the smallest node price to avoid any sticker shock, you may take that and cut a po immediately, we still wouldn't know how many you need to meet IO, CPU, RAM, etc.

If everyone rattles off the largest node, you'll think wow that's really expensive, and its likely you don't need it. This isn't just ESXi hosts where we can size based on ram. It is a holistic building block for a datacenter. We are sizing servers, storage, backups, dr, and offsite recovery all in one exercise. So data collection is mandatory from an engineering perspective.

Frankly, I haven't seen anyone say they don't want the product after seeing whet we do and understanding the architecture. I was a customer a year and a half ago, and I get what your saying, if a vendor dodges the price we automatically assume its too expensive, and in some cases were right. you now our ballpark range, from my previous post, you be the judge.

@dafyre Not really, honestly there are about 50 SKUs based on 4 basic concepts.

ROBO (extra small) Starts at a single 6-8 core and 96gb-256 ram with 3TB raw useable (not counting dedupe and compression)

Small 1-2 cpus of 8c to 22c ,128gb - 1.4tb ram, 7.2TB

Medium 1-2 cpus 8c -22c, 256gb-1.4tb ram, and 14TB

Large 1-2 cpus 8c-22c, 256-1.4tb ram, and 20TB low latency storage

All are sold as appliances, but we have a rather unique performance guarantee, so we like to work with our customer to come up with a design based on actual performance data, then we look to get a design that fits the workload and scales appropriately.

We guarantee our platform (really who else does that?) and you will find we have many happy healthy customers as we don't undersize to make a sale. We are exploding in the market due to our unique data virtualization platform, and our data protection capabilities. Usually a 3x ROI vs legacy.

I'm not sure that the east coast event will work out, and if it does that is outside of my region.

I consider myself to be a down to earth technician vs a sales'y kinda guy, so if it pleases the forum I would love to demo over (WEBEX) to anyone who is interested, in a LIVE environment of course, and also happy to run a performance capture and build a design for any of you. (this would be an exclusive event for Mangolassi users) with all the Q/A you want.

I quit my job it worked so well, and presented twice at VMWorld over it, really is a completely different way of storing data and most of us and our customers are quite passionate about it, but not in an angry hostile way like some others. It is a joy rather than an obsession.

At that point we would put real numbers behind it, and a guarantee, and you decide if you like it. Worst case you waste several hours of my time and get a great looking report of your current environment. at no cost.

Ok maybe I'm a little sales'

VR

@nadnerB Absolutely, thanks for giving us another listen.

@JaredBusch Thanks for the feedback!

@Minion-Queen I will see if we can get a seat at the table.