NetApp Inc. has made a series of announcements this year designed to provide additional options for customers looking to modernize data centers for the hybrid cloud. The moves included continued integration with SAP’s HANA solution and leveraged NetApp’s All-Flash FAS enterprise class storage and its Cloud Volumes service for analytics and database migration.

“At the end of the day, it’s all about the data,” said Robert Stumpf (pictured), an executive with enterprise solutions delivery at NetApp Inc. “The story of NetApp is really making your data much more mobile and moving it to the location of choice for any particular workload.”

Stumpf spoke with Lisa Martin (@LuccaZara), co-host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, and guest host Keith Townsend (@CTOAdvisor), principal at The CTO Advisor, during the SAP Sapphire Now event in Orlando, Florida. They discussed NetApp’s collaboration with SAP AG to integrate an e-commerce platform and the importance of building cloud-aware systems. (* Disclosure below.)

Implementing SAP’s Hybris platform

As part of its partnership with SAP, NetApp implemented the SAP Hybris platform last year. Hybris is an e-commerce platform that became part of the SAP family through an acquisition five years ago.

SAP recently announced a new suite of applications geared to support customer relationship management, and NetApp has taken advantage of this capability through SAP C/4HANA. “We’re upgrading our back office CRM system to their CRM on HANA on-premises, and we’re going to take advantage of the Hybris capabilities there to get that full picture of the customer,” Stumpf said. “We’ll be heavily engaged with SAP on their C/4 journey.”

One of the challenges facing NetApp in the development of the next-gen data center is creating a platform where developers can build cloud-aware applications for use in a hybrid model.

“When you want to make something cloud-aware, you want to look at the architecture that you have underneath it,” said Stumpf, who noted the importance of automation in the process. “You want to be able to scale the application without people needing to get involved in that scaling. They’ll just fire up new containers as needed as the volume increases, and it’s a lot more robust architecture.”

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

Photo: SiliconANGLE