Tag: Netapp

NetApp snaps up CloudCheckr

NetApp is to acquire cloud visibility management vendor CloudCheckr.

NetApp Public Cloud Services EVP Anthony Lye, said CloudCheckr’s multi-cloud infrastructure management solutions will be used to bolster Spot by NetApp, the vendor’s analytics and automation platform. He claimed that CloudCheckr’s platform will help partners increase margins, maintain security and compliance.

The product is used to help businesses scale cloud infrastructure and services.

Lye said:”Managing costs while accelerating cloud applications is a significant challenge for organisations as they work to maximize the return on investment of their cloud investments, all while running at cloud speed. By adding cloud billing analytics, cost management capabilities, cloud compliance and security to our CloudOps platform through the acquisition of CloudCheckr, we are enabling organisations to deploy infrastructure and business applications faster while reducing their capital and operational costs.

CloudCheckr CEO, Tim McKinnon, said the solution provider wants to help NetApp create an industry-leading suite of CloudOps services.

NetApp refreshes partner programme

NetApp has spruced up its Unified Partner Programme to capitalise on market changes resulting from accelerated digital transformation to the cloud.

The refreshed programme expands the firm’s partner ecosystem, adding new financial incentives as well as introducing new solutions and Services Certified specialisations.

The company said the changes will provide partners with a more “flexible, consistent and simplified” experience that will prepare them for a planned transition to a new tiering structure next year.

NetApp’s head of of Global Partner GTM & Programmes Chris Lamborn said that his outfit was transforming our Unified Partner Programme and evolving its structure to make doing business with NetApp simpler and more profitable for our partners.

Rubrik extends NetApp partnership

Rubrik, a cloud data management ompany, is extending its partnership with the cloudy NetApp software company, to offer closer product integration for their customers and partners.

With this spruced up collaboration and Rubrik’s leading Cloud Data Management Platform to be available on NetApp’s Global Price List (GPL), the two market-leading companies claim it can simplify customers’ transition to the cloud and provide modern data protection, security, compliance, and governance alongside high-density and cost-efficient object storage. 

Rain falls in cloud as NetApp cuts workforce

Hybrid cloud data services firm NetApp has revealed it has cut its workforce by almost six percent and said it will “narrow its business focus”.

NetApp said it was “realigning resources and investments” capture opportunities and “position the company for long-term success”.

“We continue to sharpen our focus on markets where we have both a significant presence and clear competitive advantage, specifically with our storage software and systems and cloud data services”, NetApp rationalised.

NetApp culls five percent of jobs

NetApp CEO George Kurian told analysts in its first quarter earnings call that it is reducing its 10,800-strong headcount by 5.5 percent, despite reporting a five percent year on year increase in net revenues to $1.3 billion.

Kurian said the global job cuts are motivated by “strategic alignment and focus” on its storage systems and software divisions. He confirmed that SolidFire – which NetApp acquired in 2016 – and its hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) teams would be most affected by the cuts.

“We realigned about 5.5 percent of our workforce and those were in parts of the business – in all the functions of the business, but in those parts of the business that were not particularly aligned to our go-forward priorities”, he explained on the call

NetApp swallows Cloudjumper

Cloud data services provider NetApp has written a cheque for  remote desktop services (RDS) and virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) market outfit CloudJumper.

The acquisition means that a new service dubbed NetApp Virtual Desktop Service (VDS) will be released. The product sorts out virtual desktop services and application management and claims to be a total solution for public cloud management, deployment and monitoring applications.

Commvault and NetApp partner on new data protection platform

Cloud data specialist Commvault has announced the launch of NetApp Scale-out Data Protection (SDP). It says it is designed to provide expanded rapid recovery support for critical data across NetApp’s hybrid-enabled systems.

The pair say that the move is the latest development in a partnership that has lasted for over 20 years, providing 1,200 customers with  data protection through Commvault Complete Backup and Recovery and NetApp’s range of on-premises and cloud storage solutions.

Powered by Commvault Complete Backup and Recovery, the thing uses  the NetApp portfolio to provide people with snapshot management, backup and disaster recovery functionality.

NetApp gets its paws on Talon

Cloud data services outfit NetApp  has bought Talon Storage, a software-defined storage company.

NetApp says that the combination of NetApp Cloud Volumes technology and Talon FAST software, enterprises can centralise data in the cloud while still maintaining a consistent branch office operation.

Anthony Lye, senior vice president and general manager of NetApp’s Cloud Data Services business unit said: “As we grow our cloud data services offerings with solutions like Cloud Volumes ONTAP, Cloud Volumes Service, Azure NetApp Files and Cloud Insights, we are excited about the potential that lies in front of this new combined team to deliver complete solutions for primary workloads.”

Dell trolls rivals in advert campaign

Gray tin box shifter Michael Dell has been trolling the company rivals in a front page advertisement in the Wall Street Journal.

Michael Dell tweeted the ad, which displayed figures from analyst IDC, showing the vendor’s dominance in the external enterprise storage space against rivals NetApp, HPE and IBM.

Lenovo chats to channel about NetApp partnership

banner_220x220Lenovo has been talking to its channel partners about its planned partnership with NetApp as it prepares its Dell EMC counter attack.

The pair announced that they would be working together at the Lenovo Transform 2.0 event in New York. The stated aim was to  bring flash storage products to market and a joint venture in China to deliver localised solutions for that market was mentioned.

Kirk Skaugan, executive vice-president and president of the datacentre group at Lenovo, said the NetApp partnership would significantly broaden and solidify  the company’s growth in the datacentre business and help to improve profitability.  Lenovo was operating in every market such as telcos, MRI scanners ultrasound, wind turbines and embedded Xeon edge devices.

Lenovo used Tranform to reveal its ThinkShield security , which it has worked on with Intel. MobileIron and Absolute. There was a laptop launch with the firm adding the ThinkPad X1 Extreme to the high end range aiming it at ‘advanced users and prosumers’. We never understood what promusers meant, and suspect an expert at the University of Marchitecture thought it up.

 

 

 

NetApp fears no cloud providers

lightning-cloudNetApp’s EMEA boss Alexander Wallner has told the assorted throngs at the NetApp’s annual EMEA Insight conference in Berlin that the storage vendor does not see cloud providers as an immediate threat.

Wallner said that adapting to the cloud has enabled the Sunnyvale-based company to build “more flexibility and elasticity” into its architecture.

“From my perspective, we’re the only former storage, now data management, provider that decided very early on to lean into the cloud. We never saw the cloud as a threat. We don’t perceive [cloud providers] as our enemy, either. Instead, we understood early on that it is beneficial to our customers that we interact with them on the cloud and support them.”

NetApp and Microsoft have announced that NetApp’s enterprise network file system (NFS) is to be available in Azure as a service.

Wallner added that while interest in the cloud “is everywhere”, most customers are clueless as to what they should be spending their cash on. As a result, it is crucial for vendors such as NetApp to keep customer options open when it comes to cloud.

“Most of our customers do not have an idea of how their cloud strategy will evolve over the next three years. Most of them don’t know what their applications will look like three years from now. It is key for customers to decide on a data management plan that is open, which will enable them to develop in whichever direction they need to. Our task as an infrastructure provider is to provide an open architecture”,  he said.

Wallner said that hybrid clouds were not something mentioned in polite conversation anymore. It was better to talk about multi-cloud environments because hybrid cloud gives the impression that customers have to choose from only one cloud provider.

“The reality is that there is nothing that customers fear more than having a vendor lock them into the cloud.”

He added that NetApp had a fair bit to do to sort itself out in a very uncertain market.

“When you looked at the data market five years ago, life was pretty easy for us. We had a good architecture on storage systems. Now, the transformation we’ve been through in the last five years has seen the picture change completely.”

NetApp on recruiting drive

P1010706NetApp is looking to recruit both partners and employees now that it has got its mojo back according to UK managing director Nick Thurlow.

NetApp hosted its Partner Executive Forum in Tallinn this week and told the assorted throngs that it has emerged from a difficult period with a refreshed product portfolio and a focus on the hybrid cloud.

Part of the transition saw Thurlow’s return from Arrow after a five-year exile.

The vendor, led by CEO George Kurian, had been carrying out a restructuring which was being given the thumbs up by its partners. Now it wants to say that after a few challenging years the company is back.

NetApp has changed dramatically and has got its mojo back, claimed Thurlow. This is all because George Kurian is “driving a wind of change through the company.”

NetApp had earlier in the week revealed that its channel business now accounts for 82 percent of all revenue in EMEA.

Despite NetApp talking up its new hyper-converged solution and hybrid cloud offering, Thurlow stressed that storage remains key to the vendor’s future and the outfit still wanted to flog lots of storage.

NetApp claims customers trapped in clouds

Every silver has a cloudy liningNetApp is rubbing its paws with glee as its rivals lock their customers into their cloud services.

The company told its Insight technical conference in Berlin that there was gigantic opportunity for it to help customers who are struggling with rival tech firms who make it hard to leave their cloud services.

The storage vendor said many cloud offerings may look good on paper but become problematic and this gives it and its channel the chance to better serve those customers.

Joel Reich, NetApp’s senior vice president for product operations told a media press conference that cloud providers were using techniques that hark back to the 1970s.

“Most service providers will be glad to help you get into their cloud, but they’re not that helpful in trying to help you get out of their cloud. If you were to look at one of the popular backup applications for cloud, it costs  little to archive your data in something like Amazon Glacier, but it costs exponentially more to get it out.”

This goes back to proprietary computer operating systems where it was someone’s goal to actually try to lock you into that proprietary operating system, Reich said.

Lock-ins were used by some cloud providers means customers have a hard time moving between services if and when a provider’s technology, price or strategy changes.

He said such tactics are actually a great selling point for his firm because customers really don’t want this lock in. They want to make the right choice for their business, not one that is based on one set of technologies that a particular cloud vendor has in play.

Hyper scale data centres give storage boost

emcboxIDC said that the storage market ended well. In the last quarter, worldwide enterprise storage systems revenue grew 7.2 percent year on year to amount to close to $10.6 billion.

And capacity shipments rose by 43.7 percent compared to the same quarter the previous year to represent 99.2 exabytes.

Eric Sheppard, a research director at IDC, said spending on enterprise storage grew in most markets worldwide with factors including demand for midrange systems using flash memory and systems designed for hyper scale data centres.

EMC was the top dog in fourth quarter, with a 22.2 percent market share. That company was followed by HP (13.8%), Dell (9%), IBM (9%) and Netapp (7.2%).

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Integrated infrastructure booms in EMEA

server-racksA report said that integrated infrastructure and platforms – that is to say vendor systems containing servers, disk storage, networking kit and systems management software – grew by 38 percent in the third quarter of last year.
IDC said vendors turned in revenues of $616 million in the quarter, a year on year growth of 38.2 percent for the EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) in the quarter.
Eckhardt Fisher, research analyst at IDC, said the growth is linked to fast spreading adoption of business intelligence systems and the perceived benefit to enterprises that brings.
The market leader for the integrated infrastructure division saw VCE as the leader, followed by Cisco-Netapp, and then HP.
Cisco grew its share by close to 163 percent for the quarter, compared to the same quarter in 2013.
VCE also took prime position in the integrated platforms sector, followed by Cisco-Netapp and HP.  But here HP belonged strongly – growing by 271 percent in the quarter.
The entire market for the third quarter shipped 238 terabytes – up 63.5 percent compared to Q3 2013.