Data storage pioneer NetApp Inc. today announced the general availability of NetApp BlueXP, a unified data control plane that it says can simplify the experience for teams managing storage and data services spanning on-premises and cloud environments.

Announced at NetApp Insight, NetApp BlueXP gives teams an easier way to manage their entire data estate, including unified on-premises resources and first-party cloud storage, the company said. It does this through its integrated and broad data service capabilities. They make it possible to deploy, automate, manage, protect and optimize data and the infrastructure that supports it in any location.

NetApp said teams need a better way to manage their data estates because of the recent shift to multicloud environments and the added complexity that introduces. As enterprises push to accelerate digital transformation, they face daunting challenges and inefficiencies that can stifle innovation, the company believes. With BlueXP, NetApp is promoting a more “evolved cloud” where teams can automate and simplify critical data operations.

NetApp BlueXP introduces some powerful new capabilities, chief among them its unified storage management. With a unified data control plane, teams benefit from having a single point of visibility across wide-ranging data environments and the ability to manage any kind of storage resource — be it NetApp’s own all-flash arrays, FAS, StorageGRID and E-Series arrays, as well as cloud-based storage such as Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP, Azure NetApp Files and Google Cloud Volumes Service.

This unification of storage systems is what powers AIOps-driven health, or more simply, artificial intelligence-driven automation that maintains those assets. According to NetApp, AI-enabled health and status monitoring will not only alert teams to infrastructure and workload issues, but also provide proactive guidance on what to do about them.

The benefits extend to greater cyber resilience too, with NetApp BlueXP powering an integrated zero-trust security model. Mobility is another benefit, with BlueXP’s integrated data movers allowing for data to be copied, synchronized, tiered and cached across all major clouds and on-premises systems via a drag-and-drop interface. Finally, BlueXP enables a more flexible consumption model, with customers required to pay only for the storage resources they use.

Steve McDowell of Moor Insights & Strategy told SiliconANGLE that NetApp BlueXP builds on the success of the company’s ONTAP Cloud data management offerings, with a platform that’s targeted at enterprises running workloads across both on-premises infrastructure and public cloud platforms. He said BlueXP complements NetApp’s Spot offering nicely, with the former focused on storage and infrastructure, and the latter around application and workload management.

“BlueXP, especially when combined with Spot, is a strong offering,” McDowell said. “Enterprises facing multicloud management challenge should absolutely evaluate BlueXP.”

Although the product is compelling, McDowell said NetApp might be challenged to gain traction because BlueXP moves it further away from its traditional storage roots into the very different multicloud infrastructure market that’s dominated by the likes of VMware Inc. and Nutanix Inc.

“Enterprise IT is all about multicloud and it’s a hard challenge to address, but I like that NetApp has recognized this,” McDowell continued. “NetApp’s offerings are the right ones. The big question is whether enterprises will embrace NetAp as it extends its reach beyond enterprise storage and accept it as a viable alternative to competing solutions from the likes of VMware. For current ONTAP customers, BlueXP is a no-brainer, but beyond that we’ll need to wait and see.”

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