Tuesday February 27, 8:10 am Eastern Time
Press Release
Study Finds Network Appliance Provides Lowest Total Cost of Ownership for Database Environments
Independent Study Finds Annual Total Cost of Ownership 75 Percent Lower than Competitive Storage Solutions
SUNNYVALE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb. 27, 2001-- Network Appliance, Inc. (NASDAQ:NTAP - news), the leading provider of network-attached data access and content delivery solutions, today announced that INPUT, a Web-based IT market research and marketing services firm, has identified Network Appliance as the storage market leader for lowest total cost of ownership (TCO) in database server software environments. The study also shows that Network Appliance solutions offer the highest data-availability. The independent report analyzed IT expenditures on products, maintenance, upgrades, database implementation, training, operations, support, and downtime.
``The findings in this study indicate that Network Appliance is addressing the timely concern of IT spending -- including product and maintenance costs, as well as the impact on revenues due to database downtime,'' said Sara Wells, senior analyst at INPUT. ``In addition to dramatically reduced TCO, INPUT found that data availability with Network Appliance(TM) solutions either meets or exceeds 99 percent, while less than two-thirds of competitive storage solutions can match this service level.''
``In these times of scrutinized IT spending, solutions with compelling TCO and high availability are sound investments,'' said Mark Santora, senior vice president of marketing at Network Appliance. ``Smart enterprises will read INPUT's study and realize that Network Appliance is the superior storage solution for mission critical applications.''
INPUT's key findings include:
Less than 10 percent of total IT maintenance time was spent on backup and recovery tasks when utilizing Network Appliance NAS solutions, compared to more than 35 percent for competitive solutions.
It takes an average of 10 minutes or less of downtime for Network Appliance solutions to scale an Oracle® database by 200GB, relative to scaling with the competitive architecture, which takes an average of four or more hours.
It takes an average of 90 minutes to restore from a system outage with Network Appliance's solutions, compared to four or more hours with competitive storage solutions.
Amount of downtime with Network Appliance is 1/5th that of competing solutions.
``This report confirms that there is only one choice to power your database storage infrastructure -- Network Appliance -- because we offer the highest performance, most cost-effective storage solutions in the industry,'' said Rich Clifton, senior director of commercial solutions at Network Appliance. ``IT budgets must be spent wisely -- scalable, flexible, and easily managed storage infrastructures are increasingly important. The Network Appliance approach addresses complexity and provides unsurpassed functionality for database environments such as Oracle.''
INPUT identified the direct correlation between the amount of network downtime and total IT expenditures from statistics provided by respondents from various industry segments such as retail, transportation, professional services, IT, financial, and manufacturing -- all utilizing Network Appliance storage solutions or competing SAN architecture.
Network Appliance has dedicated resources assigned to make its products continually tune better for database environments and is focused on winning customers to NetApp solutions that are tailored for the new data center paradigm, which is built on speed and flexibility, not ``big iron.''
To access the complete INPUT TCO Storage report, visit netapp.com.
About Network Appliance
Network Appliance, Inc., a veteran in network file storage and content delivery, has been providing data access solutions since 1992, and is a member of both the S&P 500 and NASDAQ 100 index. Major corporations and service providers, including Lycos, Yahoo!, Citicorp Securities, Siemens, Lockheed, Cisco, Motorola, and Texas Instruments have deployed NetApp solutions.
The company pioneered the concept of the ``network appliance,'' an extension of the industry trend toward dedicated, specialized products that perform a single function. NetApp storage and content delivery platforms (filers and NetCache(TM) appliances) are coupled with powerful content distribution and reporting software. This end-to-end solution offers seamless data management from the back-end data center to the edge of the network quickly, simply, and reliably. The Network Appliance product portfolio utilizes the company's innovative data access software, known as the Data ONTAP(TM) operating system, as well as standards-compliant hardware. It also offers multiprotocol support and transparent integration for UNIX® and Windows® environments.
NetApp is a registered trademark and Network Appliance, NetCache, and Data ONTAP are trademarks of Network Appliance, Inc. in the U.S. and other countries. Oracle is a registered trademark of Oracle Corporation. Windows is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation. UNIX is a registered trademark in the U.S. and other countries, licensed exclusively through X/Open Company Limited. All other brands or products are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders and should be treated as such.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
