The acquirement has been one of the best things that has ever happened, according to two NetApp vice presidents — one of whom is the original founder of Spot. After moving five applications to Spot, NetApp saw savings of 49% to 75%. And with newer acquisitions like CloudCheckr Inc., a cloud management platform that gives public cloud customers more visibility and control over cloud computing costs, performance and security, Spot is ready to take business to the next level.

Anthony Lye (pictured, left), executive vice president and general manager for public cloud at NetApp, and Amiram Shachar (pictured, left), VP and GM of Spot by NetApp, spoke to Lisa Martin, host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio, during AWS re:Invent. They discussed the success of the Spot acquisition, why it’s been so successful, and what to look forward to in the future. (* Disclosure below.)

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

What are some of the things that you’re looking forward to with CloudCheckr, as well as NetApp’s deeply connected integration with AWS. 

Shachar: The trend is that deployment to the cloud is becoming easier, but operations is becoming messier. With the CloudCheckr acquisition, we’re expanding into an area that we haven’t been to, because there are two categories in cloud cost: There is optimization and there is cost management. The business we had is in the optimization space. But, right now we’re expanding into that area of cost management so we can meet our customers sooner. So, I think we’re scaling and ramping and doing all these things, and it’s so amazing to realize that we haven’t unleashed even 1% of what we can do.

So there’s much more under the covers that we’re still waiting for?

Lye: Our roadmaps are now largely being driven by customers. And that’s just so refreshing to know that you’ve not only solved a problem for a particular customer, but the customer wants you to solve more problems — and that they trust us to be that sort of organization that can help them. So we’re full steam ahead. We’re going to continue to acquire in areas where we think we can get acceleration. But our acquisition of Spot was very much about … bringing not just a great company into the business, but to invest significantly in it. And that’s really proven I think to me … one of the most, if not the most, successful acquisition NetApp has ever done.

But it also sounds like from that customer focus, there’s clear, strong alignment with how AWS operates, how it values its customers from NetApp’s perspective, and I imagine from Spots as well.

Shachar: If there’s one thing I was really proud of during the acquisition is I got a phone call from a customer — it’s the largest food delivery company in South America — and they were very worried about this acquisition. And I asked them why, and they told me, “Because your customer service … is the best customer service I’ve ever gotten. And if I’m not going to continue to get this customer service, I need to look at finding another vendor.”

That was a very refreshing moment for me to realize how much at Spot we care about our customers — but not only as a gimmick, as something … that we really live.

I’m curious, Anthony, what did you pull over from that? What has NetApp learned from this?

Lye: I always tell Amiram that the idea was that they would essentially take us over. We sort of loved their culture. We loved their people and their process, and we literally changed a lot of how NetApp operated to operate along the Spot model. So … we let them not just sort of exist, but we let them thrive. And we encouraged them to point at other areas … that they thought we should change to be more like them. And it’s raised the bar across everything we do now. And so we now have a lot of the Spot business processes, a lot of the Spot cultures sort of seeping into the whole of the company.

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