UPDATED 13:10 EDT / NOVEMBER 27 2013

3 ways NetApp aims to stand out from other storage providers

NetApp aims to revolutionize the enterprise by means of storage.  theCube, SiliconANGLE’s premiere production program, broadcast live from the recently concluded Oracle OpenWorld event. theCube hosts John Furrier, SiliconANGLE founder and CEO, and Dave Vellante, Wikibon co-founder and CEO, sat down with Patrick Rogers, NetApp Vice President of Product Marketing and Alliances at the show. Rogers talked about the company’s strategy for the enterprise.

NetApp is just one of the many storage providers today. But Rogers explained what makes them different, stating that they focus on providing software integration as a service, they work closely with the open-source community, and they provide more efficient use of IT assets.

“You can take multiple discreet storage systems and drive them into a complete multiple storage pool. So, we think that in and of itself is groundbreaking and distinguishes our cloud services from what other vendors are doing,” Rogers stated.

NetApp’s efforts to differentiate itself from other storage providers in those three areas have been very visible this year.

Focusing on software

In June, NetApp unveiled the Clustered Data ONTAP 8.2, the latest version of its flagship storage operating system. It introduces a number of powerful features such as scaling up to 69PB of storage and 24 controller nodes plus 49,000 LUNs and 12,000 NAS volumes with 100,000 clients. It also supports up to 20 petabytes per container and comes in single-node and switchless configurations. It is also able to deliver continuous data access during scheduled downtime without manual migrations. It supports the SMB 3.0, pNFS v4.1, iSCSI, FCoE and Fibre Channel protocols, as well as resource pooling in heterogeneous environments and enhanced integration with vStorage and Hyper-V.

“What NetApp is introducing today is fundamentally a shift to this new model of software-led infrastructure,” Furrier told Kristin Feledy on a NewsDesk segment back in June. “Clustered ONTAP is a huge announcement for NetApp in the sense that it’s going to be the fundamental operating system for all of their storage devices, which literally have been installed in thousands and thousands of corporate enterprises.”

Close ties with open-source community

 

NetApp is planning to deliver a “universal data platform” atop ONTAP, which is a new solution for migrating data between on- and off-premise infrastructure. It is designed to complement NetApp’s existing SnapMirror tool, which will be enhanced to better support replication between private and public clouds. This will be accomplished by expanding its API support for OpenStack and other emerging platforms.

NetApp’s open-source efforts do not go unnoticed. The company recently earned a governing seat on the Open Virtualization Alliance alongside founding members HP, IBM, Intel and Red Hat. NetApp is credited as being the first enterprise storage vendor to embrace Kernel-based Virtual Machine.

Efficient IT assets

As for the IT assets, earlier this year NetApp invested $15 million in its partnership with Microsoft to accelerate enterprise cloud adoption. The new deal with sales and technology collaboration, the NetApp Partner Program, will serve as an “add-on” to the Microsoft Cloud OS Accelerate program. The combination of NetApp storage, data management and converged infrastructure solutions with Microsoft’s Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V and System Center 2012, will reduce costs, increase agility and improve efficiency of their enterprise customers.

image courtesy of NetApp

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