Georgens out at NetApp – new chairman, interim CEO named Longtime NetApp executive Tom Georgens has parted ways with the storage outfit, vacating his dual roles as the firm's chairman and chief executive, effective immediately. Stepping up to the CEO chair – at least temporarily – is George Kurian, who most recently had served as the firm's executive veep of product operations. …
They've hardly tanked, companies have blips and come back strong. This industry is full of hype, how much hype do the startups get and yet they do tiny revenues in comparison to the big boys. This is the reality of big business to grow one must do things differently. As a customer there's only EMC that offer anywhere near what Netapp offer my enterprise but at a fraction of the complexity.
Whoever you're trolling for it would be nice for once if some of these debates were kept away from the trolling of other vendors and onto the facts.
Agreed, but I am not sure if you are implying that EMC or NetApp is more complex. One has only one or two products (three now?), the other has competing products for the same use case (two backup solutions, multiple block arrays, multiple NAS boxes, etc) and none of them simple.
NetApp has caused a lot of their own pain by forcing people to adopt CDOT since you have to go through a complex migration to get there (and buy new gear). Most small to medium sized companies have no need for clusters of storage gear.
I would bet 90% of current netapp customers would be happy to keep running 7 mode filers if they continued to develop it. Forcing cluster mode on them is inviting competing companies to come in and sell them something new.
I agree with the previous post. This may be too late. c-dot is not ontap and customers are going to have work in their hands converting processes over and retraining operations staff. Given the lack of choice in the enterprise (EMC and NetApp) this will happen.
But NetApp remains a one trick pony and has failed to make much of acquisitions it's made in the past. They are also far from cheap and charge a margin for their name.
I don't mean the company ill will and hope they recover. I always enjoyed working in the FAS products and ontap.
So Tom Georgens is gone and rightfully so. In fact, should have happened 2 yrs ago things may have been better already. Having said that, Georgens is not Netapp's only problem.
Georgens' departure will not make clustered ontap easier, will not make the migrations go away, will not make customers love a platform they're staying away from.
If netapp is to change course, they'll need an outsider and he/she'll need to clean the executive suites, get rid of non-producers, establish a vision and make investments that can drive growth.
Repackaging and spit polishing ONTAP every 6mos as something "new" and a "great fit" for a new use case (cloud) is not a strategy but a hope.
I view George Kurian as nothing more than an interim CEO unless of course he hits a home run and shocks everybody but with no catalysts, netapp is more dependent than ever on their competitors screwing up than them succeeding.
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