NetApp just unveiled its newest offering, a storage solution that natively supports connectivity between on premise infrastructure and Amazon Web Services. It’s based on AWS Direct Connect.

NetApp Private Cloud for AWS has several major advantages, according to its maker. For starters, it allows the user to plug their data center directly into the Amazon Elastic Map Reduce big data analysis service. The solution also makes disaster recovery more cost-efficient by leveraging EC2 for failover and S3 as a replacement for traditional tape.

In addition, NetApp is touting high-performance file system architecture and support for both synchronous and asynchronous replication.

“Our work with NetApp provides customers with the performance, security, compliance, and availability benefits of AWS with the high value enterprise offerings customers have come to expect from NetApp,” said Terry Wise, head of Worldwide Partner Ecosystem, AWS. “Together, we’re enabling more customers to use our on-demand web services with increased confidence for their critical business applications.”

Companies are migrating to the cloud one step and a time, and NetApp knows it.  Private Cloud for AWS is a transitional solution that aims to help the traditionally bulky IT department take advantage of on-demand resources without committing to a costly upgrade.

At the same time some organization are taking bigger steps than others, and NetApp is catering to them too. Earlier this month the vendor introduced a major update to its E-Series platform, the OS that runs its enterprise storage systems. The software has been optimized to make better use of SSDs with the addition of flash caching, a means of tiering data that automatically stores the most frequently accessed information on the fastest drives.

The latest version of E-Series features a few  other improvements as well, including more data protection options.