Infinidat is offering unlimited capacity on demand and temporary swing capacity free of charge for 30 days, in response to a spike in customer demand fuelled by the novel coronavirus epidemic.
An Infinidat insider told us the company’s rationale in going public is “to generate awareness and challenge everybody to ignore quarterly earnings and think about how this industry can do something meaningful. Pure, Dell, Netapp, all have similar programs and can join; let’s start a movement”.
In a statement today, Moshe Yanai, CEO of the disk-based storage array vendor, said Infinidat started increasing inventory levels at the end of 2019, was confident of fulfilling all orders booked in the first half of 2020 and did not anticipate any disruption in its supply chain.
However, he noted that in the last 30 days the company had experienced a “20% increase in installations caused by limited availability of on-premises data center staff; 65% increase in unplanned Capacity-on-Demand (COD) activations, [and] Numerous customer requests for temporary “swing” capacity.”
Coronavirus and the supply chain
Blocks & Files polled several leading storage vendors today about the effects of Covid-19 on their supply chains. At time of writing, no supplier is reporting difficulties or staff shortages.
But Jerome Lecat, CEO of Scality, an object storage vendor, noted: “For the next few months, storage server and drive supply is a concern. While we don’t sell hardware, our customers do need hardware on which to install or expand storage systems based on Scality RING.
“As of now, we are not seeing shortages, and we do not yet see a need to adjust forecasts in anticipation of shortages. We do take this seriously, however, and are monitoring, with concern both for the health of our employees and associates, and for the health of our business.”
Storage vendors are possibly unaware of the impact of coronavirus on the suppliers of their suppliers. For instance, Resilinc, a US supply chain data firm, is forecasting shortages for capacitors and resistors, used in printed circuit boards. Bindiya Vakil, CEO, told the Financial Times: “The scariest thing we see is the highest numbers of parts [made in and around Hubei] are caps and resistors – tiny things nobody cares about – plus thermal components, plastics and resins, and sheet metals.”
Infinidat’s Moshe Yanai’s statement in full
Dear Customers,
I’m sure you are following the frequent updates concerning the COVID-19 response around the world. While the wellbeing of family and employees are at the front of your mind, I know everyone is also focused on minimizing risks to their business due to the potential disruption of global IT supply chains.
Infinidat began increasing inventory levels in December, 2019, and we are highly confident in our ability to deliver all 1H20 systems within 14 days of ordering. While we are not anticipating any disruption whatsoever in our manufacturing supply chain, we are, however, seeing significant increases in three related areas over the past 30 days:
- 20% increase in installation delays caused by limited availability of on-premises data center staff
- 65% increase in unplanned Capacity-on-Demand (COD) activations
- Numerous customer requests for temporary “swing” capacity
In response to this situation, effective immediately, we are enabling unlimited COD and FLX consumption at no charge for a minimum of 30 days, which can also be extended based on the evolving COVID-19 situation and individual customer needs.
COD (Capacity on Demand) is reserve, unpurchased storage capacity on existing Infinidat CapEx systems. FLX is Infinidat OpEx storage capacity, billed monthly.
Up to 100% of installed capacity can be used for 30 days at no additional charge.
After 30 days we will work with you to accommodate your expected storage growth for the remainder of the year.
The best response to any time of need is when communities come together in response to a challenge. In that spirit, we are here to help – please reach out to me or your local team to let us know how we can be of further assistance
