A week or so ago we announced a “Cash For Storage Clunkers” program.  The response to our announcement has been very positive… and frankly, a bit surprising. We’ve had lots of inquiries, requests for quotes, and media coverage. Heck, today we even had a company ask if their V-Max qualified as a clunker.  What a hoot!

And we’re not alone. In the last month, other tech and storage companies have launched their own versions of Cash for Clunkers programs. Good. I think customers who have old technology and storage arrays might just want to trade in for newer, better technology. That’s the idea.

In the blogosphere some people have suggested we were flattering another storage vendor, say “Company X”, by stealing the idea from them. We didn’t, we stole it from the US Government. Apparently we just didn’t steal it first. Time will tell if the government’s plan to stimulate the economy through this contrivance will work, but I have to say it was cute; great name, good story. It got a lot of press and everyone has heard about it.

In the end these are trade-in programs (well, not Uncle Sam’s, but that is a different story).   There is no miracle here – if you want new stuff we offer to give you money for the old stuff. Unfortunately, the old stuff might not be worth much in the IT business, but we’re willing to have a look and make an offer. Some poor guy offered us some CX700’s and we couldn’t get more than $500 for them, we were embarrassed to even tell him what we could get for them. I suppose getting 50% what they were worth when you bought them 4 years ago isn’t that bad though (relax, I am just kidding).

We announced our program to coincide with the ending of the government’s program. That’s why we said it “Extends the Cash For Clunkers Program.”  That headline was supposed to be funny. Our Marketing dude, Bob Maness said, “Pillar is taking over where the government left off.” Get it? Maybe to some it isn’t so funny. To us it’s a riot – as if some small company like Pillar could pick up where Uncle Sam left off.

I initially hatched the idea for our program while visiting customers in Canada and some great folks at Toronto Hydro. I am sure people will say some guy on a grassy knoll signaled to me in Morse code while peeking through the windows at XHQ (and you thought that flashing light was lightning). The gang down at XHQ better start closing their shades before we flatter them further. We might just rip the cache right out of our product.

As to who was first to lift Uncle Sam’s program… who cares?  We have a great program to buy back old assets with a great financial partner. And, of course, we have the most efficient storage system available with the best performance and scalability to trade up for – but that could be another blog entry….