NetApp and VMware expand their multicloud plans
Today, NetApp, the cloud-based data company, and VMWare, a provider of multicloud services and apps, have extended their alliance by promising fresh solutions and integrations between the companies’ data management infrastructures.
“According to IDC’s 2021 Multicloud Survey, eight in 10 organizations 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.”
NetApp has already assisted in the development of tools that help engineers manage, share and protect hybrid and multicloud systems, such as: VMware vSphere, VMware Cloud Foundation and other Cross-Cloud services.
“Customers today are faced with complex challenges to optimize their current IT investments while laying a path forward to modernize 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 optimize their virtual data centers, modernize 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.”
As for what is new to the partnership, VMware explains that the organizations will focus on three major customer-driven initiatives:
- Easy, affordable multicloud migration: working with the largest public cloud providers, the alliance will help customers migrate, extend and protect data across services. The idea is that the customer gets certified compute and storage at scale.
- Use Kubernetes/Containers for modernization: Manage virtual machines within a unified platform using NetAp ONTAP-based storage arrays to produce a flexible data fabric.
- Optimize and modernize data centers: improve existing resources using data management platforms.
Why Engineers Need to Pay Attention
The multicloud can severely hinder those in the engineering community. Many engineers work, provide technology for and/or integrate these multicloud environments within their organizations and customer operations. As such, engineers need tools to make these integrations easier regardless of the tools they operate or produce.
“At this stage it’s clear: multicloud 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, Chief Executive 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.”
For example, SAP, the multinational engineering software company weighed in on the partnership and how it affects its operations.
“SAP solutions power many of the world’s leading businesses today, including over 90% of the Global Fortune 2000,” says Ozren 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.”
