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You go out and talk to customers and partners and you come back with a lot to chew on. I’m always in two minds about that feedback, on one hand I absolutely want to give everyone involved what they need to make them successful. On the other I wonder if that feedback prevents me from going off and pushing hard for the stuff they don’t know they need yet. It’s a delicate balance. One of the really positive things from this round of trips is I no longer have to take shelter behind the lectern anytime the conversation turns to NetWorker. Back when it was shamefully neglected, under funded and largely ignored by the powers of the day you’d rightfully get blasted for showing up with a rather threadbare list of improvements and catch up features. This was at a time when you could clearly show that Avamar and Data Domain were charging ahead with net new features and moving into new spaces. At the time I used to be as exasperated as the user base, but you were damned with faint praise anytime it looked like you were moving in the right direction. It’s a massive change to move from the ‘You guys suck with that product’ (I know) comments of two years ago to the ‘What you’re saying you’re going to do sounds good, but I’ll want to verify it myself’ (Of course) of last year and arrive at what I’ve heard from people over the past few days. ‘You’re now on the right track. Stay on it. Do more of this.’ (That’s the plan) In one case just by upgrading from the old 7.x release of code to 8.0 and without making any other changes one customer saw a 20% increase in overall throughput in his environment. A 1/5th gain in overall performance just by running the 8.0 installer. That was before he dug into any of the new features. As a rule I don’t make promises to customers or end users (or anyone at EMC) because I know that like the biblical road to Damascus the software development process is long, winding and can lead to conversion along the way, but what I’ve been committing to people as I know it to be true, is that all of NetWorker will be renewed and refreshed in the coming 8.x releases. Root & branch. |
