A lot of dins are coming from NetApp Inc.’s marketing department about transforming into something more than a storage company. But what exactly is that something? According to the company’s marketing executives, it’s all to do with data management for multicloud. Is there any beef to this claim, and where does that place NetApp in the enterprise cloud market?

Stu Miniman (@stu), co-host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, and co-host Lisa Martin (@LuccaZara) analyzed NetApp’s market position during today’s NetApp Insight event in Las Vegas. They discussed NetApp’s pivot into multicloud, digital transformation, and their play for containerization support through Kubernetes, among other topics. (* Disclosure below.)

Storage forays into DX, Kubernetes

“What is the NetApp of 2019 and beyond?” asked Stu Miniman (@stu), co-host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio. “Are they a storage company? Are they a hybrid multicloud software-led something-something company in the future? Are they a services company?”

In essence, is NetApp bringing anything to market that makes them a better fit for multicloud than other storage vendors or cloud companies? One indicator is NetApp’s early lead compared to other storage sector counterparts, quick to signal its cloud-worthiness, according to Miniman.

“Most of the storage companies really lined up, and it was like, ‘Oh wait. Amazon’s the competition. You can’t do that,'” Miniman stated.

How much farther can NetApp go in multicloud and digital transformation?

It’s clear from NetApp’s website, press releases, etc., that “they’re really putting cloud at the heart of their strategy,” Martin said. The company’s Data Fabric is transforming from a vision into an actual architecture for cross-cloud data management. And NetApp recently acquired StackPointCloud Inc. to boost its efforts with Kubernetes, the open-source platform for managing containers. The virtualized method for running deployed applications has shaken up operations across all aspects of computing infrastructure.

“I’ve been going to the KubeCon shows for a couple of years, and storage is actually lagging in that space,” Miniman said. NetApp helped solve a lot of storage woes in the virtualization era, “so it would be great to see how they are going to play into the Kubernetes and Istio [service mesh] discussion,” Miniman concluded.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the NetApp Insight event. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for NetApp Insight. Neither NetApp Inc., the event sponsor, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: NetApp Inc.