NetApp for evolved cloud

Cloud is at a turning point. We’re past the first big wave of disruption, and nearly all companies have settled into using cloud—usually more than one, even if by accident—alongside on-premises environments. The cloud has outgrown its proverbial training wheels. And although a lot of its original promises have come to fruition, like scalability and flexibility, the current experience of hybrid multicloud environments is, shall we say, not ideal. There are roadblocks—big ones—to getting the most out of cloud. Cost, complexity, a lack of visibility, and risk, for starters. Then there’s the application and data silos that were created because of disparate application portability, telemetry, and cloud interoperability frameworks.

There’s a better approach: It’s called the evolved cloud. And NetApp is here to help you take full advantage of it. The evolved cloud is a strategic approach to hybrid multicloud environments where cloud is fully integrated into your operations and architecture, and it solves business challenges instead of creating more of them. In the evolved cloud, silos get broken down to simplify management, create consistency, and deliver complete observability across data centers and clouds. Everything is efficient, secure, and continuously optimized so you can get back to innovating.

Disruption isn’t stopping. Talent gaps are growing. And the pressure on technology-led transformation is only increasing. Some of our competitors are hanging on to their walled gardens and hyperconverged platforms. They create lock-in by telling you which public clouds you can use and slap a cloud label on siloed, repurposed software. Meanwhile, NetApp is doing what it always does—innovate. Our three-decades-long record of innovation is just the first of many reasons why NetApp is the right partner in the evolved cloud. Let’s dive in.

Everything we do is for the love of cloud. We bought into cloud before it was the cool thing to do and built deep partnerships with AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud. Our innovation is why NetApp now has the only enterprise-grade storage service embedded natively in the world’s biggest clouds.

What does this mean in the evolved cloud? Well, remember those vendors with the walled gardens? They’re not able to offer you what NetApp can: complete freedom to choose whichever cloud or clouds you want to use. You shouldn’t settle for lock-in just because a vendor tells you to. NetApp believes you should be able to choose the clouds that fit your business. Period.

We know hybrid multicloud environments like the back of our metaphorical hands. And we don’t have to tell you they are complex. IT teams are stretched to their limit dealing with the mountain of rules, tools, and manual processes that come with each cloud. Getting clouds to play nicely together just isn’t easy. And it’s hard to find more and more people with the right skillsets in an already-tapped-out tech labor market.  

NetApp^® solutions are hybrid multicloud by design. So, we can unify operations and give you full visibility and control across data centers and multiple clouds without limiting functionality or flexibility. That means you don’t need to have a deep bench of specialists. We leverage common data management capabilities at the storage infrastructure layer and open-source databases for stateful applications. And with our automation, you can eliminate a lot of manual tasks. In other words, we can significantly drop the IT skills gap on your list of priorities. 

Let’s dig into that automation we mentioned. Raise your hand if you’re tired of time-consuming guesswork of optimizing resources and infrastructure to save money—or obsessively watching to make sure you don’t let a single security threat through. Even if you have some automation in place, it might not be doing everything it could, and it probably isn’t easy to control across clouds.  

In an evolved cloud state, we can help you implement AI-driven automation that takes the burden of manual processes off teams so they can focus on more valuable efforts. But that also means that Finance will stop knocking down your door because of last month’s cloud bill. NetApp pioneered continuous optimization as a key part of multicloud management. We make it easy to give your applications exactly what they need while continuously optimizing for cost and efficiency—across on premises and clouds. Think of it like a cloud-shaped “easy” button.  

The more complex your hybrid multicloud environment, the more complex it is to keep your data, resources, and infrastructure safe. With more serious security threats growing every day, you have to remain vigilant. But how do you do that when you can’t see into all the nooks and crannies? And how do you prevent and prepare for vulnerabilities when you have disjointed policies and processes? 

If you just answered “NetApp,” you get a gold star. Cyber resilience might as well be our middle name. Our tools empower you to see into and monitor even the most disparate environments, which eliminates blind spots and reduces risk across the board. Our holistic approach combines data protection and security with things like governance and compliance. Then we add automation as the cherry on top. No more hovering over dashboards to thwart threats like ransomware. You can automate cross-platform monitoring and threat response. Even if someone clicks a link in a phishing email (really, Mike... again?), you’re covered, because with NetApp you have protection built in—not bolted on as an afterthought.

Pretty much every company has some sort of sustainability goal at this point—NetApp included. We’re committed to becoming more sustainable as an organization, to serving our customers with greener solutions, and to measuring environmental output across the full lifecycle of our products. And we’ve put science-based objectives in place to measure our success. You can learn more in a recent blog from our own Matt Watts.

In the evolved cloud, we can help you tackle your own goals. Here are the tangible ways we do that.

• Shifting from on-premises data centers to public cloud is a good first step to reducing your carbon footprint. But as we’ve already established, more cloud usually equals more complexity. As a vendor that truly understands how to thrive in the cloud, we can simplify multicloud operations and help you take advantage of cloud where it makes sense.
• Those monitoring tools we mentioned earlier play their part, too. We allow you to collect environmental data about NetApp products, enabling organizations to locate underutilized and wasted resources, which helps to reduce energy used from data centers.
• We have powerful tools that help you audit consumption, locate waste, and set guardrails to stop overprovisioning. 
• And last but not least, automation can make a big difference. Saving money by eliminating overprovisioned resources isn’t just cost effective—it can significantly reduce carbon emissions. Whereas public cloud hyperscale campuses are more efficient than on-premises data centers, it’s still better to not waste energy at all.

We’ve made some bold claims about how we can change your hybrid multicloud experience. Now it’s time to talk about how we deliver on them.

• NetApp BlueXP™ unifies hybrid multicloud operations so you can manage your entire data estate with complete observability across hybrid multicloud environments—all through a single control plane and set of APIs. SaaS-delivered storage and data services offer integrated monitoring and protection, powerful automation, and flexible consumption options.

• Spot by NetApp is our industry-leading portfolio for cloud operations and application services. It automates cloud infrastructure to improve performance, reduce complexity, and continually optimize costs. It also helps you adopt open-source cloud-native database technologies and migrate more quickly from older platforms.

NetApp has an outstanding collection of infrastructure, data, and application services to support an evolved cloud state on premises and on the world's biggest clouds. Period.