At NetApp’s annual technical conference Insight almost 3,500 customers, partners, engineers and consultants came together in Berlin from November 16-19, 2015 to discuss and share how NetApp’s Data Fabric vision is becoming a reality. Attendees had a choice of 300 break-out sessions and earned over 1000 new certifications, a 45 percent increase over last year’s total, quickly building new growth in NetApp knowledge and skills in the marketplace in just four days.

Manfred Reitner, NetApp Senior Vice President and General Manager EMEA, says: “With customers from 62 countries in attendance, this is truly a global event. It is becoming clearer to our partners and customers that Data Fabric isn’t just a neatly packaged solution – it’s about helping customers embrace the age of digitisation and welcome disruption offset by the Cloud.”

The top two challenges for embracing cloud are “ease of integration with existing systems” (52%) followed closely by “Data Security concerns” (51%). This was the conclusion of an online survey conducted by NetApp asking event participants about the top challenges facing cloud adoption. “Data Security” (38%) and “Ease of Implementation (36%) ranked third and fourth on the list of top concerns among NetApp Insight Berlin attendees.

Customers like DARZ – a German cloud service provider, DWS - German Weather Service, or Tiscali – an Italian telecom leader, shared their perspectives and solutions on how they make secure hybrid or multi-clouds a reality for the benefit of their customers. Keynote speaker Chris Anderson, former Editor-in-Chief at Wired magazine and CEO of 3D Robotics, the largest manufacturer of commercial drones in the US, showcased how drones in the future may rely on Data Fabric architecture. For instance, as computer engineers are working on applications in which drones gather data through sensors and cameras. Farmers, then, can turn this data into information which they can use to improve efficiency of their operations. By conceiving drones as part of the internet – not built into the stack as an afterthought, but from the beginning with the drone, phone and the cloud all part of the same platform – the “full stack approach is what changes the game”, Anderson explained in his keynote, “creating the biggest Big Data opportunity” he has ever seen.

Insight attendees, when asked if six percent of IT Services are delivered via Hybrid Cloud today, where would they expect the market to be 5 years from now, over one third of the responders expect the market to grow in the range of 26-51 percent. One-fourth even expect to see a 52 to 75 percent increase.

NetApp is addressing this demand and in the course of the event announced new products, solutions, and services to enhance ease of use and performance as partners and customers manage, move and protect their data in the hybrid cloud. NetApp’s announcements covered

• StorageGRID Webscale 10.2
• New SnapCenter
• New Commvault IntelliSnap for NetApp
• Expanded Synchronous Replication with MetroCluster
• Enhanced Professional Services for Disaster Recovery Solutions
• Flash for the price of disk
• Extension of 3x Performance Guarantee Offer
• New release of clustered Data ONTAP with Inline Dedupe and Copy Free Transition

On the closing day of Insight 2015 in Berlin, NetApp handed over a check donating $7,000 to the German Red Cross represented onsite by its Foreign Aid Foundation. In order to raise the money, NetApp invited its Insight participants to engage on Twitter and for every mention of the hashtag #NetAppInsight the company would donate one US-dollar to the Red Cross. As part of NetApp’s value of engaging in the community wherever the company does business, NetApp’s goal was to make a modest contribution by increasing awareness and sensitivity for people in need – especially in light of the situation of many refugees in Germany.

According to the German Red Cross Foreign Aid Foundation “When people arrive in Germany, it is for them the end of a long, dangerous and difficult journey. The German Red Cross provides aid to over 140,000 refugees in Germany, who urgently need support. Each donation is very welcome and needed to help provide the basic needs – food, shelter and medical assistance. We thank NetApp and the conference attendees for their contribution in improving people’s lives.”

Additional resources

• Read the NetApp announcements:
  • NetApp Extends Enterprise Data Protection Across the Hybrid Cloud
  • http://www.netapp.com/us/company/news/press-releases/news-rel-20151119-338859.aspx
  • NetApp Delivers More Efficient, Affordable Enterprise-Grade All-Flash Storage
  • http://www.netapp.com/us/company/news/press-releases/news-rel-20151119-181205.aspx

• View our NetApp EMEA and event videos on Youtube

• Event general sessions videos: On NetApp TV

• Follow NetApp EMEA with posts and album of the event
  • On Facebook
  • On Twitter @NetAppEMEA