More than two-thirds of CEOs of the 2 000 largest global organisations have identified digital transformation as the centerpiece of their growth and profitability strategies moving forward. To successfully transform, business leaders are recognising the need for new ways to harness their most valuable asset — their data. 

Becoming data-centric is no small undertaking. It requires new approaches to computing now that data is much more distributed, dynamic, and diverse. Customers also face data integration challenges as they adopt hybrid and multi cloud models for greater agility, scale, and cost control. IDC has released a new report, Worldwide Data Services for Hybrid Cloud Taxonomy, 2017, that reflects the business opportunities and IT requirements for enterprises to maximise the value of data in a hybrid cloud world.

NetApp ushered in the era of simplified data management at its founding 25 years ago. Today, it enables organisations to unleash the full value of their data for competitive advantage. NetApp is included as a key player by IDC for its ability to provide hybrid cloud data services. Specifically, IDC called out the NetApp Data Fabric strategy, which provides consistent and integrated services that deliver data visibility and insights, data access and control, and data protection and security.

“Successful digital organisations exploit data insights to deliver personalised value services, optimise the customer experience, explore new opportunities, and reduce the overall cost of doing business,” said Laura DuBois, group vice president, Enterprise Storage, Servers and Infrastructure Software, at IDC.  “Hybrid/multi-cloud deployments are becoming the new norm for organisations looking to harness data’s potential, but siloed approaches to development are limiting effectiveness and slowing digital transformation.  What’s needed is a comprehensive hybrid cloud data services solution set that delivers a full range of capabilities, including data protection, security, compliance, integration, orchestration, and data location optimisation, that span structured and unstructured data, on-premises and cloud.  NetApp, with its Data Fabric approach, is already innovating in these categories and is making the investments in hybrid cloud data services to attract new customers to its vision of a data-driven future.”

“Data is the lifeblood of every organisation, and today’s leaders are under tremendous pressure to harness the potential of that data to create new value—with limited time, skills, and budget,” said Jean English, chief marketing officer for NetApp. “Our relentless focus on data drives us to help solve these customer challenges with new approaches such as the NetApp Data Fabric. That’s why pioneering hybrid cloud data services is a natural next innovation that gives customers and partners the confidence to move into the future with NetApp.”  

NetApp customer Polaris Alpha is a data visionary whose team, including 400+ software developers, is key to making the world safer. With major locations in Colorado, Maryland and Virginia, the high-tech specialist provides custom software solutions that allow government agencies such as the Department of Defense and Department of Homeland Security to quickly evaluate potential threats and make smarter decisions. 

The company undertook an ambitious transformation to embrace a multimodal approach that required modernising every aspect of their enterprise IT. They quickly began transitioning from monolithic applications to cloud-native containerised technologies. Rapid IT changes resulted in 10% monthly growth in storage requirements, which increased latency and hampered productivity.  A new converged infrastructure solution provided by NetApp and partners Cisco and Flair Data Systems delivered the agility they needed to accelerate time to market.

“Our credibility is our competitive advantage. Being able to deliver when we say we will makes a big difference to our credibility and relationships with our customers, who use our systems to visualise and share massive amounts of data in support of critical decision-making for U.S. national security across air, sea, ground, cyber, and space operations,” said David Coker, senior vice president of Information Systems at Polaris Alpha. “With the solutions and support of NetApp and its partners Cisco and Flair Data Systems, we have reclaimed time to focus on innovation, increased our data efficiency, and significantly accelerated the development of new offerings to meet our customers’ unique deployment needs.”

NetApp also unveiled a “Data Visionaries” awareness campaign to drive visibility of the strategic importance of data. The campaign connects to content that showcases how NetApp’s expertise and Data Fabric portfolio support customers in their transformation to data-centric organisations that will lead the future.