NetApp shares fall on downbeat forecast Despite reinventing itself with a "bold blue" new brand identity this quarter, NetApp's net income was practically flat in Q4 2008. Investors say: awww. But the storage vendor's revenue rose a healthy 17 per cent year-over-year, beating some market estimates. Investors say: eh? Not so fast — NetApp's forecast for next …
NTAP only finished down a little over 2% for the day.
That's less of a loss than the NASDAQ in general and less than 1/2 of what Google lost today...
So, what does that 2% loss mean?
Not much.
Even with today's loss the stock is up about 25% since the middle of March.
Of course, that doesn't make for sensational news reporting...
If they can drive the IBM relationship hard, via the IBM rebadging of the NetApp units as IBM N Series (see http://www-304.ibm.com/jct03004c/systems/storage/network/) they should do much better. Unfortunately IBM sell NetApp as NAS and there are few skills within IBM on the more complex N Series. IBM prefer to sell their DS range. This, combined with poorly performing local agents/distributors in many countries just fulfilling orders to the large buyers such as Yahoo and Google, has contributed to flat sales.
The NetApp story is quite attractive, especially when combined with virtualisation and business continuity. Their snapshot technology enables protection against software corruption and the SnapMirror replication software is better than similar products from EMC and HP. Maybe they should try should modelling of price elasticity and see if dropping the software prices will increase sales.
We have some normal NetApp filers, and also two rebadged N-Series (for a specialist system that is otherwise all-Blue). The boxes and software are all great, as is the support we've had from NetApp themselves and their supplier, but the N-Series Reseller and IBM have been weak by comparison. Not enough product knowledge, suggested upgrade paths they then can't deliver due to some bits not being available as rebadged, etc. Same IBM reseller is hot on real IBM kit. I would not willingly touch the rebadged flavour again. We'd also buy a lot more NetApp kit for general storage if only it wasn't so eyewateringly expensive compared to less sexy but just about adequate alternatives. Get those price models out!
Bob.
The NetApp's channel pretty much sucks, IMHO. We had a meeting last year where they were trying to push us the NetApp SAN kit as an option against the HP EVAs we currently use for low-end SAN. The opening spiel went well, it all sounded so good, but when we got down to the nitty-gritty it became very obvious they hadn't a clue, to the point where I had to point out to them they were offering us a SAN device which came with only one interface (i.e., no redundant connectivity) when we had specified a highly-available design. Cue more EVA purchases....
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