Chapter 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. ...

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