“The world is going to cloud—to hybrid infrastructure. We need to manage data of any flavour. Integration between on-premises solutions and the cloud using a data fabric will be critical for success.” – Italian telecommunications leader Tiscali

NetApp has released new Data Fabric solutions and services that deliver the data management capabilities organisations need to accelerate success in the hybrid cloud era.  The new offerings extend NetApp’s leadership in enabling customers to seamlessly manage data across whatever IT resource they choose, speeding innovation and enabling better business decisions.

“Management of digital data is essential for organisations to innovate faster and capture new revenue opportunities in a fast changing technology landscape. NetApp’s Data Fabric vision, solutions and services allow customers to realise the full potential of hybrid cloud, helping them drive speed and scale while balancing cost and risk,” said Lee Caswell, vice president, Product, Solutions and Services Marketing, NetApp. “These announcements further strengthen the core role NetApp technologies hold as the foundation for the hybrid cloud, particularly our clustered Data ONTAP environment, which provides a single platform spanning flash, cloud and disk resources.” 

Data Fabric, NetApp’s vision for the future of data management, was unveiled a year ago at NetApp Insight, the company’s annual technical conference. Since then, the company has teamed with its well-established and growing ecosystem of partners and service providers to create integrated solutions and services that make the Data Fabric real. 

The announcements include:

• Data Fabric Solution Essentials, starter kits that make it easier for customers to become hybrid cloud ready and quickly see benefits as they evolve their infrastructures.  Three new offerings target key IT challenges, focusing on accelerating applications, gaining control of shadow IT, and improving disaster recovery capabilities.
• Data Fabric Enablement Services to help customers create their own data fabrics.  NetApp experts can help customers identify optimal workloads for the cloud and gain the architectural design and deployment insights they need for success.
• Expansion of cloud provider relationships: NetApp is now a Google Cloud Platform Technology Partner.  Technology Partners provide tools which integrate with Google Cloud Platform to extend its reach and functionality.  NetApp customers can choose from more than 275 service providers to craft their hybrid cloud, with support for multi-cloud and multi-directional strategies and integration of resources that are on-premises, near-the-cloud and in-the-cloud.
• Data security, additional media support, volume capacity increases and other enhancements to Cloud ONTAP, NetApp software that allows customers to quickly deploy enterprise-grade storage in the cloud and automate data movement to and from their premises and Amazon Web Services.
• Enhanced security and other capabilities for NetApp AltaVault cloud-integrated storage solutions. These solutions speed recovery and reduce risk, enabling users to back up data with security to any cloud.

Get started in the hybrid cloud with data fabric solution essentials

NetApp Data Fabric Solution Essentials are low barrier-to-entry starter kits help customers quickly see the benefits of a hybrid cloud model.  NetApp has targeted three common use cases and broken down the barriers to moving, managing and protecting data across performance levels and locations.

• Application Acceleration solution kit: Allows customers to quickly deploy a four-node flash and disk cluster for Microsoft SQL Server or Oracle databases. The kit showcases the unique capabilities of NetApp all-flash and clustered Data ONTAP to protect against data loss, provide high, consistent performance and deliver comprehensive data management across flash, disk and cloud resources using a single platform.
• OpenStack solution kit with FlexPod: Enables customers to get up and running on an OpenStack private cloud in days, not months, with known costs and proven capabilities. This solution empowers corporate IT to deliver competitive cloud services at scale to internal business clients with the same speed and ease of a public cloud, while maintaining data control and reducing cost.
• Snap-to-Cloud DR solution kit showcases the value of the cloud for maintaining business continuity and retaining control of business data for disaster recovery (DR) operations. Moving DR operations to the cloud reduces data centre space and storage infrastructure, resulting in cost savings and flexibility. Includes a one-year license for the NetApp Cloud ONTAP software subscription as well as installation services and three years of support.

Data fabric enablement services:  These four new services give customers greater confidence in embracing hybrid cloud strategies so they can build their own data fabrics.  Organisations gain knowledge of workloads with affinity for the cloud and insight into architecting and deploying a hybrid cloud foundation.

• Cloud Sourcing Strategy Workshop: Identifies and prioritises business applications and aligns each to the most appropriate cloud model—private, public, or hybrid.
• Service Catalog Design: Defines a set of storage services, clarifies service requirements, identifies standard configurations, and creates a service catalog to help customers meet their service level agreements.
• Service Platform Design: Rationalises the infrastructure and designs service platforms to dramatically reduce complexity and operational disruption.
• NetApp Private Storage for Cloud Implementation Service: Provides turnkey configuration and deployment of a hybrid cloud solution that enables a multi-cloud environment, delivered jointly by NetApp and partners.

Additional resources

• Find out how the Data Fabric benefits our customer Tiscali
• Hear perspective on the business value of Data Fabric in this video from NetApp’s CEO.
• Find out more about our Data Fabric solutions here and how our partners benefit here.
• Get the deep dive on all things Data Fabric with this technical white paper.
• Read more about our cloud services.
• Follow NetApp on Twitter.