Today’s technology companies are shifting the focus of information technology departments from just the tech to broader business objectives by providing turnkey solutions that abstract away the technical complexities, especially through application programming interfaces. The widening portfolio of on-demand solutions as a service can empower IT practitioners by freeing up more of their time to be involved in the business planning discussions.

“You can’t just be the tech anymore; you have to understand why your business is making this effort, why it’s investing in this technology, why they would look to go to the public cloud … start learning about your business. Learn about how the business is run and how it generates revenue, and see what you can do to affect that,” said Gabe Chapman (pictured, left), senior manager of hyperconverged infrastructure at NetApp Inc.

Chapman and Sidney Sonnier (pictured right), information technology consultant and a member of the top-credentialed A-Team expert in NetApp solutions, spoke with host John Furrier (@furrier) and guest host Keith Townsend (@CTOAdvisor) of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the NetApp Insight event in Las Vegas, Nevada. They talked about how NetApp’s API-driven solutions empower customers to focus on business objectives. (* Disclosure below.)

Abstractions and APIs

The API economy is allowing for IT departments to take on more of a business focus. Technology companies are centering their product strategy around empowering IT professionals with complete software control over data management by abstracting away the underlying complexity and providing it as an API.

“That’s where we have things like hyperconverged infrastructure being at the forefront for so many organizations. NetApp making a foray into this space as well is to push, to simplify as much as possible the day-to-day minutiae and the infrastructure provisioning,” Chapman said.

This is the message that NetApp and its partners are driving home to customers who debate building out their own infrastructure. Rather than dealing with the details with an in-house team, NetApp allows customers to focus on their core competencies and value propositions.

“That’s the reason we charge up for a product … the fact that we do all the heavy lifting for the customer. We provide them with an engineered solution,” Chapman said.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of NetApp Insight US 2017. (* Disclosure: NetApp Inc. sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither NetApp nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE