Interlude - Index of

2
Starting NetApp
On Toasters, Angels, Resellers,
and Ferraris
Mike Malcolm was a great mentor to me at Auspex, and
I loved working with him, so I was excited to meet him for
lunch at Hobee’s Restaurant in Mountain View to hear what
he had in mind. His idea was to build a storage appliance—a
special purpose device designed and optimized for just one
function: to let people store data over their network. It would
be inexpensive enough for small workgroups to buy, as easy to
install as a CD player, and manageable by users with minimal
experience. Mike’s simple concept would change the storage
industry. This first meeting was in December 1991, and James
and I quickly agreed to join up with him.
The simplicity of an appliance is very powerful. It does
only one thing, so it isn’t as flexible as a general purpose
de vice, but for that one thing, it can’t be beat. Consider cooking:
with burners on top and an oven inside, a stove can make
anything. In theory, a stove can make toast, but a toaster does
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