Product reliability
This survey section assesses how well a product performs over time. In particular, we ask users about downtime, the need for unplanned patches and how disruptive unplanned patches are to the operation.

IBM spoiled NetApp's quest to sweep all categories and sections. IBM's midrange product reliability score of 6.85 topped NetApp's 6.79, although NetApp won the enterprise category with a 6.70 (the highest of that group). IBM's customers awarded the company's midrange products a 7.11 for the statement "This product experiences very little downtime." IBM also received a good score for "This product requires very few unplanned patches" (6.88).

When asked about any unplanned downtime with his IBM N Series boxes, Baucum...

While IBM had the highest score in this section, NetApp bested IBM on two items, a score of 7.10 for "This product experiences very little downtime" and "This product requires very few unplanned patches." True to form, these questions proved a predictor of the overall winner. NetApp's undoing, however, was the statement "Patches can be applied nondisruptively." The associated 6.11 score may be decent in its own right, but it was enough to drag NetApp's section average down to second place.

"I don't think any other product compares to this one," notes Ultrasonic Precisions' Fishman about the reliability of his NetApp FAS6000s.

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