Dear everyone in this thread:
SimpliVity are amazing, and I will punch anyone who disagrees in a sensitive body part.
Listen to me: you all know me. You know that I am both a very loud customer advocate and one of the loudest, most irritating voices for dropping prices. I need to say this very loudly and very clearly: SimpliVity are a fantastic company, with top notch service and a damned-near-impossible to beat product.
Like any company, they aren't going to meet every single niche need. They certainly aren't the cheapest on the market. They aren't trying to be all things to all people and they aren't trying to be the low cost supplier, so it's not shocking that they are neither.
What they are is the absolute best, full stop, at data efficiency. Nobody manages to do data efficiency as thoroughly as they do, at the speeds they do and with the WAN efficiency that they do. This is SimpliVity's schitck, and it has real world implications.
The first is the aforementioned WAN efficiency. The second is that highly similar workloads (such as VDI) absolutely scream on SimpliVity. I could go on, but you get the idea.
Does this make SimpliVity something of a "luxury car" for hyperconvergence? Absolutely. But it's not "a Lamborghini", it's more of a "Tesla Roadster". The price isn't about pointless flash; you get something different for your money, and different enough that it becomes addictive to those who can afford to use it. The money isn't spend on flash or brand name; they deliver actual value for it.
Now, I'd be the first to piss on them for overcharging or otherwise not living up to their promise. Everyone here should know that about me by now. I have, in fact, been in multiple meetings with their top brass where I am the loudest customer advocacy voice in the room, demanding they meet this need, or that requirement, and lower the price.
Despite that, they don't deserve to be pooped on. They aren't all things to all people, but they are absolutely untouchable at what they do.
Cheers.
