It was too complex. It was complicated, the solution we had before. We had multiple carriers and tapes; and the backup, we were really trying to keep that encrypted and secure. And it was just really complex.

We actually had an audit and the auditor told us that it was too complex. So we were looking at a way to simplify it and that's where AltaVault came in. It took an entire silo of complexity and simplified it to a device in the cloud.

We switched because it was easier; and the cost. It was really a special use appliance that did a very good job at what it did.

We were using LTO-6 and we were having to swap tapes out constantly. We were murdering our tape library so we had to buy another tape library, and then there was the overhead of storage, moving it offsite, keeping it for a year, keeping records, and the like.

Here, I just dump to a location, it dedupes to the cloud, and after one year it automatically deletes itself and I don't have to do any extra work. It's all automated.

I was sourced to go out into the market and look at what was out there. I'd been an existing NetApp customer and it made sense to look at what they had, especially now with the new versions of ONTAP and being able to literally snap mirror and snap vote stuff off into AltaVault, that was a real plus. I didn't need another piece of software to go and grab data to go put it into the cloud. Being able to manage one interface is really powerful.

We chose AltaVault, because we were really looking at our storage costs. They were always increasing each year. I don't think we've ever deleted data in our business, so every year I was going back adding more costt. I needed a solution that I could look at for over three to five years and say I'm going to put this investment in now. Also, say to management, over three to five years based on the current growth rates, and obviously leave it open for the future as well, it's going to cost you roughly this much. Because I know exactly how much it's going to cost me, I am able to charge that back into different departments, which is really good.

We were using other companies as far as NetBackup. We were using the solution for EMC, and we wanted to try to do something different. That's what we did by selecting the AltaVault.

Some of the reasons why I assume they chose NetApp is we look for vendors who are all about being flexible: A unit that can be flexible in different environments, such as cloud-based or on-premise, and also if it works with other vendor's products.

In the past, I have worked with Hitachi.

The functionality was good. It offered unified storage with normal arrays. However, the pricing wasn't as good.

We were refreshing our storage about two years ago and, at the same time, our tape infrastructure was due for a refresh as well. As part of that our partners, including NetApp, worked with us and they showed us AltaVault and it appeared to be a great solution.

Our company grew, so that is why we chose this solution.

We had Brocade, and then we went to this, AltaVault. We were looking for something to backup to the cloud that was easy to use.

We were previously using LTO-5 with Quantum. We switched because our tape infrastructure was rapidly becoming unable to handle the amount of backup data, and our engineers were having to replace tapes very frequently as well as the speed of backup, and just the management. Our business was quickly moving to a backup everything forever model, which tape is not geared towards.

We use NetApp as a partner and consulted with their SEs and their pre-sales team to determine what would be the best solution for our organization.

For us, when selecting a vendor, what's important is the value-add they bring to the business. So not only that they're trying to sell us a product, but they're aware of what our business does and they come to us with solutions that actually are applicable to our business. That's a really important feature.