Re: Now 2 Degrees Frost

In regard to Robin's note about priding themselves on quick response. When we were researaching shared storage solutions back in the early part of this year, we submitted a detailed information request on the website contact form and never received a reply.

After that I submitted a detailed direct email to sales@2degreesfrost.com and also never received a reply. Had we gotten a reply I would've almost certainly followed up with phone calls.

We check our spam filters daily (through Clean Mail), and I'm especially diligent at checking when I'm waiting for a reply from a company I've emailed for the first time.

It doesn't do much good to have a website, contact form and direct email contacts if they can't get through to people or if they go unanswered. I can only assume they were filtered or simply went unread.

Many facility owners on the Cow are like me. Just about every workday is spent editing, shooting or meeting with clients. I do all my equipment and facility research in the evenings online. Then do phone inquiries, conference calls etc. in one big batch on a slow day.

We researched probably 20 different solutions when we were looking at shared storage. I simply didn't have the time to call each and every one of them, explain in detail our needs, and then listen to the answers

Anyway...we were intrigued by your products, but ultimately spent our time evaluating the products from people that seemed to want our business. As noted in earlier posts, that included barely a handful of companies.

As an aside, we also contacted Coraid. They took over a week to respond to an initial email...and the response we got was so vague...so cryptic in it's product explanation, that I immediately crossed them off the list.

I think what everybody on these groups is trying to tell companies is this:

We need easy to understand, clear product descriptions and we want products that solve our problems. I'll give you an example directly from your website of something that confused me during my research.

Your section on AoE says:

With 2ºFrost proprietary SAN-Adapt™ software, SATA-SAN supports cross-platform SAN shared filesystems FibreJet™ and MetaSAN™ which provide complementary high-performance approaches to SAN file sharing for content creation, video and audio editing SAN workgroups and Servers/Clusters.

What does that mean? The top of your AoE web page says it's a turn-key solution. Then this paragraph suggests I would need either FibreJet or MetaSAN software to get file-sharing for video editing. FibreJet is something like $1500 per editing seat, and MetaSAN is roughly $1000 per seat. I don't call that "turn-key" when I have to pay anywhere from $4000-$6000 to get file-sharing with a system. If FibreJet or MetaSAN are included in the turn-key price...that should be made clear.

Anyway...I've discussed the shared storage issue with dozens of facility owners over the last year, and they all agree that the industry makes it:

-Overly complicated

-They talk "down" to facility owners when it comes to how the various systems work, especially when it comes to discussing block-level and file-level issues.

-Many of the storage companies can't accurately explain the difference between SAN, LAN, ISCSI, and AoE.

-Most of the companies making products don't seem to understand what small to medium sized post facilities need....which is a simple to administer, transparent storage system that allows multiple editors to edit from the same storage pool simultaneously.

Anyway...I'm certainly not trying to slam 2 Degrees Frost, as their products and track record seem to indicate they're a very progressive company. But at the same time, none of that matters if no one follows up when a customer requests information.






Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
www.videomi.com