Page 87 - DCAP405_SOFTWARE_ENGINEERING

Software Engineering

Notes 15. Active stakeholder participation is critical to the success of your modeling efforts because
your project …………………….. know what they want and can provide you with the
feedback that you require.

Caselet Advantage agility!

AN (Storage Area Network) is more evolved than NAS (Network Attached Storage)
says the storage industry. It is more sophisticated, more complex, faster, and more
Sexpensive.
The same reason, Network Appliances (NetApp) uses to sell its NAS systems. NAS is
simpler, less expensive and equally reliable, the company says, and that makes it “perfect
for India,” says Anal K. Jain of NetApp.
Network Appliances put all its bets on NAS, until its latest announcement introducing a
combined NAS and SAN product. Users can shift from one to the other to access data, a
feature that no other vendor in the world offers.
Companies do sell NAS, but the two are separate solutions, not compatible with one
another.
NetApp is different not just in that, but also because its solutions are Unix-based. Most
traditional storage companies (like EMC) began by offering IBM-compatible disks and
memory, and they operated on mainframe-like lines, Jain says.
“There was a high cost of sales, high cost of manufacturing, high margins and the companies
were strong on quality and support. Often, support was a good 20 per cent of the cost of the
solution itself.”

In a break from this, NetApps is lower priced, requires little support and uses Internet
Protocol (IP) instead of the more expensive Fibre Channel (FC). Describing it as a “younger,
faster moving” company, Jain says that this gives it a huge potential in India, essentially
a non-IBM market.
Proprietary systems never took hold in the country and there are practically no mainframes
in use. There are a few minis (AS 400s) around, but India hardly has the kind of companies
which are described as “enterprise class” that would require mainframes, he believes.

It is partly for this reason that India is one of the three emerging markets identified by
NetApps in addition to China and Brazil. “We get out-of-proportion support (from the
headquarters in the US)” says Jain.
Despite that, some things still need to be sorted out, such as changing the billing system to
take advantage of the duty structure in the country. Today, NetApp ends up costing more
in India than its competitors only because of the way it bills. The price advantage available
in the rest of the world is not available here.

“There is a perception that NAS is not good for databases, but we have proved them
wrong,” says Jain. “More than technology rivals, we are fighting perceptions,” he says.
The other challenge is for the company to build its brand. While it has been named
number three in the storage industry by IDC, it is still not well known. The company has
to still “start doing things for the Indian market.”
Contd...

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