Data storage provider NetApp Inc. is updating its software services to help its customers take better advantage of their hybrid information technology infrastructure.

The company said today it’s adding new capabilities to its NetApp ONTAP data management software that provide deeper cloud integration, greater consolidation and continuous data availability, helping to simplify and improve the efficiency of business critical applications that run in the cloud or on-premises.

In addition, NetApp said it’s adding more options to its Keystone Flex Subscription, which provides more flexible pay-as-you-grow subscriptions for companies that wants a more “cloudlike” experience on-premises. Finally, the company announced a new NetApp SolidFire Enterprise SDS solution, a software-defined storage offering that it says can be deployed on any hardware to serve as the foundation for customer’s private clouds.

NetApp has traditionally been a seller of data storage hardware, but with that business under intense pressure from public cloud providers such as Amazon Web Services Inc., it has been putting more focus on its data management software in recent years. These days, NetApp is following a “cloud-first” strategy that enables its customers to access their data wherever it lives, as if it were hosted on a local file system.

NetApp said today’s updates are important because they will help customers extend data management from their on-premises environments to any cloud, optimizing the performance and security of their data and reducing costs.

“Digital transformation has accelerated to the point where projects that used to take years to accomplish now need to be completed in months or even weeks,” NetApp President César Cernuda said in a statement. “Now, we make it easier for [customers] to develop applications in the cloud, move applications to the cloud, or create cloudlike experiences on premises.”

Photo: NetApp