From its beginnings as a developer of software programs for high availability inventory applications, Zerowait has focused on meeting our customers changing needs. As our early international assignments led to increased usage of the Internet for the transmission of inventory data and status reports, our customers, who deployed large numbers of Web Servers, led us to explore the specialty area of load-balancing and traffic management. By 1999, we represented 10% of the sales of Arrowpoint®, a major player in the switch-based, load-balancing arena. Unfortunately, when Arrowpoint was purchased by Cisco®, existing OEM Agreements were terminated, forcing Zerowait to concentrate on other areas of business including computer storage and backup.

NetApp® had gained a reputation for excellence in highly reliable storage, and we chose to partner with them for our high availability customer base. We became a NetApp Platinum level reseller, and then one of the first NetApp Registered Service Providers. As the Dot Com boom imploded, NetApp made changes to their business model, canceling our agreement and forcing Zerowait to change course once again. In 2002, as NetApp’s support costs skyrocketed, we worked with our NetApp customers to develop a comprehensive third party support solution that provided them a Next Business Day (NBD) advanced parts replacement solution along with Incidental Technical Services (ITS) to assist with configurations, migrations, and other complex tasks. We then expanded into recycled/refurbished hardware sales and worked with leasing companies to help them remarket their NetApp equipment inventory with transferable licenses.

In 2008 we began to hear from customers that they needed a new archive solution. Archive requirements continued to expand, driven both by the constant expansion of business data and government regulations requiring more types of data be stored for increasingly longer periods. Our customers told us that off-lease NetApp systems were too expensive for petabyte size requirements, especially given the faltering economy. They were tired of paying for expensive software support, tired of paying vastly inflated prices for what they could see was a collection of off the shelf hardware, but they wanted the Tier One support experience – on board diagnostics that would report an error when it occurred, along with the information necessary to correct it.

As we discussed our ideas with our customers, it became clear SimplStor would have to be dense, energy efficient, and RAID based while offering a solid platform designed for easy replacement of failed components to keep support costs down. We quickly settled on Linux for our O/S – it offered high acceptance in the user community, along with formal support when required as provided by Red Hat – all with no licensing fees. Our engineers reviewed available hardware, tested suitable candidates, and settled on a collection of off the shelf hardware that met all of our requirements while keeping prices in line. Then they created a suite of utilities, utilizing tools provided by the hardware manufacturers along with open source software, to monitor the system and notify the admin and our support team in the event of a failure, as well as provide a weekly update of system status.

In March of 2010 we delivered our first system, and in April of 2011, we released Rev 2, with even greater density. Today, SimplStor can be found in Computer Animation, Engineering, Oil and Gas, Disk Drive manufacturing, Power Tool manufacturing, and many other environments. We continue to work with our customers and suppliers to ensure SimplStor continues to deliver the features they need while helping to keep budgets in line. We welcome your comments and suggestions, and thank you for your interest in SimplStor.