NetApp and VMware strengthen global partnership to help customers modernise with multi-cloud - TechInvest Magazine Online

NetApp® (NASDAQ: NTAP), a global, cloud-led, data-centric software company and VMware, Inc. (NYSE: VMW) has announced the expansion of the companies’ longstanding global alliance. Through innovative solutions and go-to-market initiatives, NetApp and VMware are helping customers reduce the cost, complexity and risk of migrating and modernising enterprise-class workloads in multi-cloud environments. In addition, organisations can accelerate the performance and delivery of both traditional and new modern applications, and simplify daily operations through new integrations between VMware and NetApp data management infrastructure.

The NetApp and VMware partnership is built on the foundation of shared experience supporting twenty thousand mutual customers over more than 20 years. NetApp is a consistent VMware strategic design partner for current and future VMware Cloud offerings including VMware vSphere, VMware Cloud Foundation and several VMware Cross-Cloud services. NetApp and VMware are helping customers to effectively manage, share and protect their hybrid and multi-cloud environments by collaborating on customer-driven co-engineering to offer innovative solutions across an ever-changing technology landscape.

“Customers today are faced with complex challenges to optimise their current IT investments while laying a path forward to modernise and accelerate their business,” said George Kurian, Chief Executive Officer, NetApp. “Together, NetApp and VMware have helped thousands of customers solve their multi-cloud challenges by effectively managing their enterprise workloads in any environment. By delivering powerful new solutions that help companies optimise their virtual data centers, modernise their applications, and provide cost-efficient, enterprise-class data management services to VMware Cloud, we can meet customers anywhere they are on their cloud journey.”

“At this stage it’s clear: Multi-cloud is the model we’re going to rely on for many years to come. It is the de facto operating model for the digital era, giving customers the freedom required to build, deploy, and manage applications in the way that best suits their business requirements,” said Raghu Raghuram, ChiefExecutive Officer, VMware.“Together, VMware and NetApp offer businesses the multi-cloud flexibility and choice they need to leverage the best innovations in any cloud environment.”

NetApp and VMware: Powering the multi-cloud era

The new wave of modern applications powering this digital age requires an innovative approach to enterprise workload and data management infrastructure. Organisations today are turning to the public cloud to simplify and accelerate their business initiatives and require flexibility and choice across leading public cloud providers. These organisations also need new, and integrated platforms that can manage both enterprise and modern applications while efficiently utilising existing resources. The renewed partnership between NetApp and VMware addresses these challenges through focusing on three major customer-driven initiatives:

• Cost-effective & seamless migration to multi-cloud –NetApp and VMware are currently innovating together across the world’s three largest public cloud providers to certify and support VMware Cloud and NetApp Cloud Services. This helps customers running on VMware utilising either NetApp or non-NetApp storage environments on-premises to seamlessly migrate, extend or protect data-demanding enterprise workloads and files to the cloud with reduced cost and risk. Customers can now right-size their cloud compute and storage architectures to reduce and control the costs of running data-demanding workloads in the cloud at scale, while also avoiding the costs of refactoring applications from on-premises into the cloud. NetApp and VMware have taken their decades of experience in managing enterprise workloads in the data centre to deliver fully certified, integrated and supported solutions that bring these same benefits to customers leveraging the public cloud, all built on a trusted workload and data management foundation.
• Accelerate modernised applications using Kubernetes/Containers –VMware Cloud Foundation with Tanzu allows IT to manage virtual machines and orchestrate containers from one unified platform. VMware Tanzu and VMware Cloud Foundation support the use of NetApp ONTAP-based storage arrays, providing customers the ability to seamlessly build out a flexible data fabric for traditional VMs and modern, containerised applications. For Kubernetes workloads, NetApp is a design partner with VMware Tanzu container-native storage integrating Astra Control with VMware Tanzu for VMware vSphere Virtual Volumes (vVols) deployments. Customers can now simplify and accelerate new modern application development and deployment alongside traditional virtualised workloads using enterprise-scale, high-performance and protected solutions that are jointly validated and supported.
• Optimise the data centre through modernised infrastructure –Organisations today require an efficient, cost-effective workload and data management platform to optimise existing resources. NetApp is a VMware co-design partner with vSphere and vVols for new and expanded support of key technologies from NetApp file and block storage platforms. This includes new certification and support to enable the use of vVols with NVMe-oF to allow enhanced block storage flash performance and more granular VM storage management over multiple types of network transports from FC, ethernet, and standard TCP/IP networks. This also includes new integration to enhance the availability and security of running virtualised workloads across NFS 4.1 environments. Customers can now unlock more performance for traditional virtualised workloads leveraging existing infrastructure investments while simplifying daily IT operations through jointly validated and supported solutions.

Analyst and customer commentary

“According to IDC’s 2021 Multicloud Survey, eight in 10 organisations are operating in multicloud environments, but most of them cite challenges such as lack of integration, management complexities, lack of end-to-end visibility, limited skills, and spiraling costs of operations,” said Archana Venkatraman, Research Director, Cloud Data Management and CloudOps at IDC. “Together, VMware and NetApp are addressing these challenges head on to help customers make the most of their existing investment while providing a simplified path to move workloads to the cloud as their business requires.”

“SAP solutionspower many of the world’s leading businesses today, including over 90% of the Global Fortune 2000, saysOzren Kopajtic, Vice President, Global Cloud Services at SAP. “NetApp and VMware deliver the scalable, high-performance foundation of SAP’s global public cloud platform, supporting nearly 30 petabytes of information across tens of thousands of virtual volumes and virtual machines, and running one of the largest global deployments of VMware and NetApp technologies.”

“Be The Match helps thousands of people fighting blood cancers or blood diseases receive a potentially life-saving transplant each year by matching patients to donors through our national registry,” said Rob Hanson, Vice President, Technology Officer at Be The Match. “Our partnerships with NetApp and VMware allow us to efficiently manage twenty million records, benefiting from their commitments to continuous security and product innovation – key principles important to our mission. By reducing the risks of data loss while improving the productivity of our database and storage administration teams, they’re helping us bring together data from physicians, providers, donors, and researchers to have an invaluable impact on our patients.”