[Preamble: I was a delegate of Storage Field Day 12. My expenses, travel and accommodation were paid for by GestaltIT, the organizer and I was not obligated to blog or promote the technologies presented in this event]
In Day 2 of Storage Field Day 12, I and the other delegates were hustled to NetApp’s Sunnyvale campus headquarters. That was a homecoming for me, and it was a bit ironic too.
Just 8 months ago, I was NetApp Malaysia Country Manager. That country sales lead role was my second stint with NetApp. I lasted almost 1 year.
17 years ago, my first stint with NetApp was the employee #2 in Malaysia as an SE. That SE stint went by quickly for 5 1/2 years, and I loved that time. Those Fall Classics NetApp used to have at the Batcave and the Fortress of Solitude left a mark with me, and the experiences still are as vivid as ever.
Despite what has happened in both stints and even outside the circle, I am still one of NetApp’s active cheerleaders in the Asia Pacific region. I even got accused by being biased as a community leader in the SNIA Malaysia Facebook page (unofficial but recognized by SNIA), because I was supposed to be neutral. I have put in 10 years to promote the storage technology community with SNIA Malaysia. [To the guy named Stanley, my response was be “Too bad, pick a religion“.]
The highlight of the SFD12 NetApp visit was of course, having lunch with Dave Hitz, one of the co-founders and the one still remaining. But throughout the presentations, I was unimpressed.
For me, the only one which stood out was CloudSync. I have read about CloudSync since NetApp Insight 2016 and yes, it’s a nice little piece of data shipping service between on-premise and AWS cloud.
Here’s how CloudSync looks like:
