• larger and more mature product and intellectual property portfolios; and • substantially greater financial, technical and other resources. We also compete against cloud providers and vendors of hyperconverged products, which combine compute, networking and storage. These providers are growing and expanding their product offerings, potentially displacing some demand for our products. In addition, some of our competitors offer bundled products and services in order to reduce the initial cost of their storage products. Further, some of our competitors offer their storage products either at significant discounts or even for free in competing against us. Many competitors have developed or acquired competing storage technologies with features or data reduction technologies that directly compete with our products or have introduced business programs designed, among other things, to compete with our innovative programs, such as our Evergreen Storage model. We expect our competitors to continue to improve their products, reduce their prices and introduce new features, services and technologies that may, or may claim to, offer greater value compared to our products. In addition, these developments may render our products or technologies obsolete or less competitive. These and other competitive pressures may prevent us from competing successfully against our current or future competitors. Many of our competitors have long-standing relationships with key decision makers at current and prospective customers, which may inhibit our ability to compete. Many of our competitors benefit from established brand awareness and long-standing relationships with key decision makers at our current and prospective customers. Our competitors often leverage these existing relationships to discourage customers from evaluating or purchasing our products. Additionally, most of our prospective customers have existing storage products supplied by our competitors who have an advantage in retaining the customer because, among other things, the incumbent vendor already understands the customer’s IT infrastructure, user demands and needs, or the customer is concerned about actual or perceived costs of switching to a new vendor and technology, particularly during the uncertainty created by COVID-19. If we are unable to successfully sell our products to new customers or persuade our customers to continue purchasing our products, we will not be able to maintain or increase our market share and revenue, which would adversely affect our business and operating results. Our brand name and our business may be harmed by the marketing strategies of our competitors. We believe that building and maintaining brand recognition and customer goodwill is critical to our success. Our efforts in this area have, on occasion, been hampered by the marketing efforts of our competitors, which have included negative or misleading statements about us and our products. If we are unable to effectively respond to the marketing efforts of our competitors and protect our brand and customer goodwill now or in the future, our business will be adversely affected. If we fail to successfully maintain or grow our relationships with partners, our business, operating results and financial condition could be harmed. Our future success is highly dependent upon our ability to establish and maintain successful relationships with our partners, including value- added resellers, service providers and systems integrators. In addition to selling our products, our partners may offer installation, post-sale service and support in their local markets. In markets where we rely on partners more heavily, we have less contact with our customers and less control over the sales process and the quality and responsiveness of our partners. As a result, it may be more difficult for us to ensure the proper delivery and installation of our products or the quality or responsiveness of the support and services being offered. Any failure on our part to effectively identify, train and manage our channel partners and to monitor their sales activity, as well as the customer support and services provided to our customers, could harm our business, operating results and financial condition. Our partners may choose to discontinue offering our products and services or may not devote sufficient attention and resources toward selling our products and services. We typically enter into non-exclusive, written agreements with our channel partners. These agreements generally have a one-year, self-renewing term, have no minimum sales commitment and do not prohibit our channel partners from offering products and services that compete with ours. Additionally, our competitors provide incentives to our existing and potential channel partners to use, purchase or offer their products and services or to prevent or reduce sales of our products and services. The occurrence of any of these events could harm our business, operating results and financial condition. 14
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