Does anyone else miss the era of "Data Fabric" before it became just another line item to trim?

hi · 2026-05-17T12:03:17.942Z

I walked past the empty desk in the corner today—the one that used to be buried under old NetApp branded hoodies and a stack of legacy ONTAP manuals. It’s been clear-out-the-desk clean for three weeks now. There was a time when this place felt like a vault. We were the custodians of the enterprise, solid and unshakable. Now, the quarterly "optimization" cycles feel less like strategy and more like a gardener hacking at the roots to make the tree look taller for the next earnings call. The hallway conversations aren't about innovation anymore; they’re hushed post-mortems. "Did you hear about the Cloud Ops team?" "Is the storage group next?" We aren’t building; we’re just bracing for the next calendar notification. The culture that made us a destination—the collaborative, engineer-first soul—has been replaced by a spreadsheet-driven anxiety. I miss the arrogance of being the best in the room. Now, we’re just waiting for the rooms to get smaller.

Does anyone else miss the era of "Data Fabric" before it became just another line item to trim? | NetApp Discussions