Data is no longer left in servers locked behind firewalls. It’s becoming distributed. Endpoints spanning across different clouds, hybrid environments, and on-premises infrastructure are storing pieces of data scattered all around. Data is becoming increasingly dynamic and difficult to control. 

“The data on that storage is actually one of the most important assets that have moved into the cloud,” said Ronen Schwartz (pictured), senior vice president and general manager of Cloud Volumes at NetApp Inc. “And really building your data fabric with the right level of governance and insurance for everybody is really important.”

Data-centric organizations looking to weave their data fabric need modern and consistent storage. “The core data services [for storage] are no longer optional. They could not be left to a specific implementation, desire or no desire. They have to be built into the platform and be insured in a continuous way,” according to Schwartz.

Schwartz spoke with Lisa Martin, host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio, during AWS re:Invent. They discussed cloud adoption, the Amazon Web Services Inc./NetApp partnership, and what NetApp is seeing in customer trends. (* Disclosure below.)

[Editor’s note: The following content has been condensed for clarity.]

Talk to me about some of the things that you’re seeing in the market from a cloud-adoption perspective. 

Schwartz: What we’re seeing in NetApp and in the market in general is very fast adoption of cloud, the movement of core services, core workloads into the cloud, and organizations that are not just adopting cloud, but actually innovating in the cloud faster than ever. 

What’s been some of the conversations like with customers? 

Schwartz: If I take it into the conversation that we’re having with customers, I think [they] have moved from the first few months [of 2020] when it was really about survival, and … ensuring continuity, into the place that organizations are looking to leverage the change and increase the innovation.

There is a really good article from AWS, “the 6 Rs” of cloud adoption … it talks about the fact that when you have cloud applications, you have the opportunity to re-host — to lift and shift them. You have the opportunity to re-platform; to design them from the cloud from scratch. You have the ability to re-factor the application, meaning that you are actually adopting a certain cloud component. And in some cases, you are actually re-purchasing or re-tiring applications. And in some places, you just retain them on-premise. So I think organizations are looking into their current situation and they’re basically choosing their strategy of how to move specific workloads into the cloud.

So talk to me about the NetApp [and AWS] partnership. 

Schwartz: [NetApp] has been there from almost day one. We’ve been building the capabilities from the Cloud Volumes ONTAP to the Cloud Volumes Service, which is a native service in AWS. Basically, our latest announcement that we made in our Insight event is putting all of that in a single platform and basically optimizing it for the AWS users. Meaning that the user with no additional effort can store data [and] receive access to the data in the performance needed for the right application — but also enjoy out-of-the-box data services, like backup, disaster recovery, compliance, caching, and so on. 

One of the things that we know that’s happening from an IT perspective is that it’s getting more complex [to transform]. So talk to me about how you’re working with customers to make things simpler as data volumes grow and as they’re adjusting to a new world. 

Schwartz: The truth is that there is a variety of services around infrastructure that we do that go way beyond storage. So we’re looking into a variety of services, all of them optimized to work on the AWS cloud. All of that with out-of-the-box configuration to empower everybody to basically do the right thing in the cloud.

Give me an example of some successful customer who really understands the values, full breadth of value that NetApp delivers, especially in AWS environments. 

Schwartz: I would divide the customers at a high level into three categories. You’re seeing basically application developers with a goal to deliver their application as fast as possible. And they not only need to do it as fast as possible, but they’re trying to do it in the most efficient, cost-effective way possible. So the NetApp conversation with them is: How can infrastructure empower them to do things better, faster and cheaper? 

The second group is central IT. They need at the same time to support innovation and also the lift and shift and move off critical applications. When we are talking to central IT, we’re guaranteeing to them the same latency, the same performance, the same scale that they had on-premise, and even more in the cloud. 

The third example is basically an organization putting innovation in the cloud in parallel to their existing on-premise example …  a lot of the innovation is delivered in the cloud where they scale faster, the resources available are much easier. But they still need the power of the best of breed and storage technology.

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

Photo: SiliconANGLE