How much can your business grow when the infrastructure can easily deliver new demands?

The tale of two new clients and two different outcomes

HE'S DAN
SHE'S JILL

A Big New Customer

How do you respond when a large account comes calling?

Meet Jill and Dan, system architects for competing analytics companies. Both companies deliver a robust and popular analytics software-as-a-service offering.
MEET DAN
MEET JILL
Jill and Dan are also responsible for delivering the environments for new customers.
Their experiences delivering these environments are quite different
DAN

“This is going to take a miracle..."

JILL

"OK, This is going to be easy!"

Jill and Dan know what an important deal this is.
It's time to rally their teams!
DAN'S TEAM
JILL'S TEAM
DAN'S TEAM

Dan wonders how his sales team got him into this mess. He doesn't have enough space in his data center to even begin testing, let alone get the customer online at the needed volume.

He calls his Legacy Storage, Inc. rep. "Hey, Lonnie, we've got an issue. We have some serious engineering work to get done."

Lonnie: "Sure thing. I'll get our SE on the phone, and we can be out there next week."

JILL'S TEAM

Jill calls her NetApp rep with a smile. "Hey, Ronnie, looks like we're going to need another 10 nodes—the highest capacity. Can you get them here quickly?"

Ronnie: "Sure thing. The quote is on its way."

JILL'S TEAM

Jill calls her NetApp rep with a smile.

"Hey, Ronnie, looks like we're going to need another 10 nodes—the highest capacity. Can you get them here quickly?"

Ronnie: "Sure thing. The quote is on its way."

The Internal Kick-Off Update

Are your client onboarding meetings harbingers of things to come?

DAN'S TEAM

Dan's sales IT team are having a difficult conversation.

Data migration is under way to make room for the new client, and the engineering work is under way for the new gear.

Fortunately, Legacy Storage, Inc. is shipping some temporary gear that will arrive in a couple of weeks.

JILL'S TEAM

Jill's sales and IT teams show a live representation of the new customer's portal. The customer is already creating accounts, onboarding data, and creating a few reports.

There is still work to be done, but everything is going well, and the new NetApp® SolidFire® gear arrives in a couple of weeks.

JILL'S TEAM

Jill's sales and IT teams show a live representation of the new customer's portal. The customer is already creating accounts, onboarding data, and creating a few reports.

There is still work to be done, but everything is going well, and the new NetApp® SolidFire® gear arrives in a couple of weeks.

DAN'S TEAM
Dan's sales team is clearly not pleased. They have to let the customer know what the new timeline will look like, factoring in extra effort by Dan's IT team.
Jill's sales team reports that the customer is so excited they're already looking at other areas to expand.
Jill's sales team reports that the customer is so excited they're already looking at other areas to expand.
JILL'S TEAM
JILL'S TEAM
Dan is at the office with his team.
It's going to be a long night—and weekend.
Dan is at the office with his team.
It's going to be a long night—and weekend.
Jill is at home enjoying her evening.
The sales teams for Dan and Jill's companies are having dinner with their customers. The outcomes are very different for Dan and Jill.

Status Report Time

DAN'S TEAM

Dan and team are meeting with the customer. It's been a tough road, but they are now ready to start onboarding parts of the data. Only small parts. This is not what the customer was sold.

The hardware from Legacy Storage, Inc. has arrived, but it's still getting set up in the data center and isn't ready to be configured yet.

JILL'S TEAM

Jill and team are meeting with the customer. They've onboarded the customer quickly, and the new SolidFire nodes have arrived and were installed. No additional integration was required. There's more work to do, but not on the infrastructure side of things. Game on.

Jill's customer is ready to start moving forward with another project and has a friend for the team to meet.

JILL'S TEAM

Jill and team are meeting with the customer. They've onboarded the customer quickly, and the new SolidFire nodes have arrived and were installed. No additional integration was required. There's more work to do, but not on the infrastructure side of things. Game on.

Jill's customer is ready to start moving forward with another project and has a friend for the team to meet.

Now It's Showtime!

SolidFire: the best platform to help you deliver.

DAN'S TEAM

Dan and team have put up a tremendous effort, while also supporting surprise growth needs of other customers. Unfortunately, they are still falling short on this major project. System complexity and a shell game of resources with Legacy Storage, Inc. has left them exhausted and still underdelivering.

To make matters worse, the sales team thinks the recent miracles mean that they can bring in more big customers. Today's miracles are tomorrow's expectations.

JILL'S TEAM

Jill and team delivered the infrastructure for their customer several weeks early. They were even able to accommodate the client's new requests and begin onboarding two of their referrals. All of this was possible because of flexible, programmable infrastructure backed by NetApp SolidFire.

When the infrastructure is part of the solution, today's miracles are just part of doing business.

JILL'S TEAM

Jill and team delivered the infrastructure for their customer several weeks early. They were even able to accommodate the client's new requests and begin onboarding two of their referrals. All of this was possible because of flexible, programmable infrastructure backed by NetApp SolidFire. 

When the infrastructure is part of the solution, today's miracles are just part of doing business.

It's Never Too Late

NetApp SolidFire can bring your infrastructure to the future, making you more competitive and improving margins, regardless of the software you're delivering.

Dan has learned a lot from his recent experiences. His team's architecture, though well designed, wasn't able to handle the new demands. He needs to deliver a better experience for his customers and his team.

Dan knows now that he has to deliver more than just availability.
He has to deliver agility as well.

It's time to reevaluate.

Jill's team continues to deliver, and the business is able to grow its sales organization, in large part due to its integrated and flexible architecture built on SolidFire.

Jill's team is now investigating new tools and technologies so they can begin delivering an improved experience for their developers and new service offerings for their customers.

It's time to innovate.

Agile. Scalable. Automated. Predictable.

SolidFire all-flash arrays are known for their scale-out architecture, quality-of-service controls, and multitenancy capabilities.
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Ultimate Software turns to SolidFire to achieve:

  • Simple API capabilities to enable software integrations
  • Performance with fine-grain quality of service (QoS) and the ability to adjust resources dynamically
  • Out-of-the-box storage analytics with NetApp Active IQ
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