NetApp broadens hybrid cloud portfolio to unlock best of cloud

NetApp has announced new features and enhancements to its hybrid cloud portfolio to help businesses upgrade their IT infrastructures and accelerate digital transformation. NetApp hybrid cloud solutions make it easier for enterprise customers to put their data to work—wherever and whenever they need it—by providing new safe methods to consume and operate data services on-premises and in the cloud.

“The promised benefits of migrating to the cloud may be profound, but many IT departments are still working to overcome on-premises challenges, like managing the complexity and costs of moving data, protecting against ransomware, and ensuring reliable performance for critical applications,” said Brad Anderson, Executive Vice President,Hybrid Cloud Group at NetApp.

He added, “As the hybrid cloud specialist, NetApp can help enterprises move their digital transformation efforts forward to deliver business results faster and within budget—whether they are still developing a strategy or in the middle of executing large-scale migrations.”

NetApp’s industry-leading ONTAP® software continues to serve as the cornerstone for hybrid cloud as the only solutions provider with native integrations for the world’s largest public clouds. NetApp’s latest release of ONTAP includes improved ransomware protection, greater data management capabilities, and NVMe/TCP support for faster performance. New digital wallet capabilities for NetApp Cloud Manager and enhanced data services for simplified administration across a hybrid cloud, more flexible consumption options to better control costs, and new Professional Services offerings to help customers unlock the full value of on-premises and hybrid cloud resources.

“IDC’s research shows that approximately 70% of enterprise IT customers plan to modernize their storage infrastructures in the next two years to support next-generation workloads. But the key operational advantage will be in optimizing workload placement across traditional on-premises and cloud environments,” said Eric Burgener, Research Vice President, Infrastructure Systems Group at IDC.

He also said, “As an industry leader with years of innovation and expertise delivering hybrid cloud solutions, NetApp is uniquely positioned to help enterprises transition to hybrid cloud models to achieve the scalability and flexibility they need to deliver critical data services and workload capabilities that drive business value.” 

NetApp’s latest portfolio innovations announced today include:

• ONTAP Data Management Software Enhancements: With the latest release of ONTAP, businesses can use machine learning to protect themselves against ransomware attacks, with integrated preemptive detection and quicker data recovery. The new edition delivers enterprise-grade performance for SAN and contemporary workloads with NVMe/TCP support, expanded object storage capabilities, and easier management. In addition, the future NetApp AFF A900, a next-generation high-resiliency all-flash system for business-critical applications, will be powered by this latest ONTAP release.          
• Enhanced Data Services: Customers may benefit from more mobility and insight into data service licence usage across a hybrid cloud with new digital wallet capabilities offered in NetApp Cloud Manager, with prepayment of credits enabling quicker setup to minimise procurement headaches. There are enhancements to NetApp CloudBackup and Cloud Data Sense services, new customer-ready templates for Cloud Volumes ONTAP deployment, completely embedded Active IQ, and deeper integrations with NetApp Cloud Insights and ONTAP software support Kubernetes workloads are among the other new features.
• More Flexible Consumption Options: Customers continue to embrace NetApp Keystone Flex Subscription, an on-premises storage-as-a-service product with native cloud integration. Within barely over a year of its launch, the service has expanded to four continents, including petabytes of capacity. NetApp has introduced a new freemium service tier for Cloud Volumes ONTAP, which gives users a fully featured, perpetual licence to use ONTAP in the cloud for applications requiring less than 500GB of storage. Organizations can employ enterprise-grade data services for modest workloads like Kubernetes clusters at no cost because of this consumption flexibility. An organization only needs to convert to a subscription whenthe workload matures and scales.

“As a leading IT consultancy specializing in cloud infrastructure and services, our clients are increasingly working with us to reduce CAPEX spending by taking advantage of cloud-like consumption models for their on-premises environments,” said Kent Christensen, Virtual Practice Director for cloud and data center transformation at Insight.

He also said,  “NetApp Keystone helps us provide a truly flexible consumption model for enterprises, serving as a platform to provide business-critical data services across the entire hybrid cloud data fabric, which will be a huge boon for our growing client base.”

• More Accessible Hybrid Cloud Expertise: NetApp is also releasing new Support and Professional Services options to make it even easier for customers to reach out to specialists for step-by-step help as they move to hybrid cloud. NetApp extends its data center support paradigm to cloud services with SupportEdge Advisor for Cloud, which provides quick, direct access to experienced specialists. Customers who require on-demand and ongoing help while they migrate to a hybrid cloud can use NetApp Flexible Professional Services (FlexPS). Organizations can obtain the professional help they need to develop and build a data fabric strategy, execute solutions, and optimise their hybrid cloud with predictable costsand avoid procurement delays.