NetApp: Partners' enterprise concerns are 'bullsh*t'

Storage vendor insists partners need not worry about it pushing its direct sales force towards big enterprise customers

NetApp has boldly dismissed concerns raised by partners that it is too heavily focused on the enterprise space, branding their worries "bullsh*t".

At its Partner Executive Forum in Warsaw, NetApp's general manager of EMEA Manfred Reitner (pictured) took to the stage and stressed to the 250 delegates that his company is focused on both large customers as well as what it calls the MSB segment – medium-sized and small businesses with an annual storage budget which comes in under $1m (£0.65m).

He said this is a recurring issue he has had to tackle in the past 12 months when meeting partners and discussing the firm's go-to-market strategy.

"There was a lot of concern from you guys that NetApp is changing its strategy," he said. "[Partners thought] NetApp is going for the enterprise, partners [should only] go into the MSB [space]. That is bullsh*t, I am sorry to say.

"What we have done is divided the market into three equally important themes for us... and in each of the three themes, you are the most important part of our go-to-market. If you look at the enterprise, yes, of course, we are focusing our direct sales force more on the enterprise. But only to help you to build a solution our customers need. Our customers are going away from infrastructure so it's not that our direct sales guys are going there and selling infrastructure, we have to build a compelling solution for our customers which is way more than a piece of hardware of software."

In a media Q&A session after Reitner's address, NetApp's senior vice president for global partner sales Thomas Stanley reiterated the point his colleague was making and explained how partners got the impression MSB was less important.

"We put out a megaphone about winning in the enterprise and service provider space and what you could have heard potentially is that we were diluting our focus on MSB," he said. "That is far from the case. What we were stating was how much investment we were going to invest in enterprise and service providers. Manfred's point was ‘don't be mistaken - MSB is a key piece of the business we do and we are not walking from that'. We were bold about our statements on enterprise and service provider and Manfred wanted to make the point ‘don't take that as meaning we are not committed to MSB.' That's a place we win big with partners."

The firm did admit there have been problems in the MSB channel recently , but vowed to fix them.

Reitner said: "In the MSB channel, in the past, our sales model was very expensive because we had done the same – what we've done in the enterprise, we've done in the MSB. We have to find a way to get more traction in the MSB market and you are a key component of it."

Good things come in small packages

Throughout the event so far, NetApp execs have hammered home the importance of embracing the MSB customer base through its partners and unveiled a new incentive to prove its commitment to resellers operating in this space.

NetApp's EMEA channel sales director Sven Schoenaerts told partners:

"Obviously money is important in our business and extra money and extra rebates are always nice to have to motivate [partners]. We already launched in March the MSB net-new account incentive, which was quite successful. It was aimed at the MSB market and many of you have taken advantage of that.

"We are expanding that this year to more pieces of the portfolio. And I am quite happy to announce today that by 22 June, we will announce a flash incentive for the MSB space. There will be rebates available for partners selling all-flash NetApp solutions into the market in the MSB space. We are also going to be very aggressive on the pricing of our all-flash arrays. Our ambition is absolutely to kill those little dogs which are biting at our ankles. We are going to make it happen with you."