Smart Storage Solutions Enable Midsize Organizations to Accelerate Growth, Increase Simplicity, and Leverage the Cloud

NetApp Unveils New Low-Cost FAS2220 and Expands Partner Cloud Ecosystem to Help Midsize Businesses Start Right, Keep It Simple, and Grow Smart

| Source: NetApp, Inc. NetApp, Inc.

SUNNYVALE, CA--(Marketwire - Jun 5, 2012) - Midsize businesses face the challenge of keeping pace with growing demands while managing the volume of data being generated, all with limited IT resources and budget. Building on a simple, flexible, and efficient IT infrastructure enables the agility required to help midsize businesses capitalize on this data growth to drive their success and create a competitive advantage. As a result, the decisions midsize businesses make about their storage foundation play a critical role in their future success.

NetApp's new (NASDAQ: NTAP) FAS2220, which starts at under $8,000, is the latest member of its entry-level product portfolio and builds on the momentum and success of the recently introduced FAS2240. Already an established leader in the midsize market, with more than 10,000 customers turning to NetApp each year for their storage needs, the new FAS2220 delivers innovative new technologies and increased value that enable midsize businesses to:

  • Start right by providing more performance and software value than traditional entry-level storage systems
  • Keep it simple by delivering increased performance without increasing deployment or management complexity
  • Grow smart by leveraging existing storage investments and easily adding new capabilities to meet changing needs

NetApp also unveiled an expanding ecosystem of value-added reseller (VAR) partners to provide midsize businesses with cloud backup and disaster recovery services built on NetApp® along with new channel enablement programs to help partners expand their business.

Enhanced Portfolio Provides Powerful, Simple, and Flexible Platform

  • NetApp's FAS2220 leverages new NetApp Flash Pool technology to provide an unmatched combination of performance and value to help midsize businesses start right and stretch their dollars. Flash Pools, which extend NetApp's Virtual Storage Tier approach to the midsize market, enable customers to accelerate application performance and are simple to implement and operate "out of the box." Flash Pool technology also seamlessly integrates with NetApp's industry-leading suite of nine storage efficiency technologies to help customers increase utilization and reduce power costs. NetApp is the only vendor offering this unique intelligent caching approach in the entry-level storage market.
  • The new NetApp OnCommand® System Manager 2.1 helps simplify, control, and automate both setup and ongoing management of NetApp storage. This tool allows customers to improve their storage and service efficiency, boost productivity, and reduce the impact of storage management on IT resources.
  • The FAS2200 series runs on the latest version of the Data ONTAP® operating system to provide a truly unified, scalable architecture that enables customers to easily and affordably upgrade to higher-end systems and new capabilities without needing forklift upgrades. Data ONTAP also provides "cluster-ready" capabilities, enabling midsize customers to seamlessly add storage capacity as needed to their shared infrastructures with no downtime.

VAR Ecosystem Helps Midsize Businesses Leverage the Cloud

  • According to a recent study done by Enterprise Storage Group,1 74% of all midsize businesses will increase expenditures on cloud services in 2012. NetApp is working closely with select VAR partners to deliver data protection as a service (DPaaS) to help customers start right and grow smart. DPaaS enables customers to better protect their business from lost productivity, revenue, and goodwill associated with data loss and downtime.
  • DPaaS is a logical first step into cloud services for many midsize businesses because it delivers powerful disk-based recovery and second-site failover functionality typically enjoyed by large enterprises at a fraction of the cost of traditional disk-based solutions. And with the ability to pay as they go, decision makers with DPaaS can optimally align IT spending to the growth of the business.
  • DPaaS maximizes the effectiveness of limited administrative resources because it is simple to initiate and easier to maintain than legacy tape protection infrastructures. By moving to DPaaS, administrators can eliminate onerous tape management tasks, restore data in minutes versus hours or days, and leverage experienced support teams and monitoring tools to help save valuable time and resources.

New Programs Enable Channel Partners to Accelerate Business Growth

  • The GetSuccessful™ Cloud Services Program provides reseller partners with industry-leading support and connects them with NetApp's ecosystem of cloud service providers to help them transform their business to capitalize on the cloud service opportunity.
  • Additional programs, promotions, and financing offers provided by NetApp specifically help NetApp resellers help existing customers make the transition from their legacy NetApp storage platform to the new FAS2200 portfolio. As a result, resellers have more to offer their customers and can increase their business opportunities by offering services.
  • NetApp will participate in VMware's 'Real World Advantage' campaign. The campaign provides VARs with various joint sales and marketing tools to help them accelerate sales opportunities and generate leads for VMware® and NetApp solutions with midsize customers.

Supporting Quotes

  • Bob Schoen, senior vice president of Information Technology for Digital Insurance
    "Digital Insurance has experienced 50% growth in the past year and we realized that our storage infrastructure needed to be able to seamlessly expand with our needs. Transitioning to a NetApp solution, which includes a FAS2240, has significantly streamlined our overall IT infrastructure and enabled us to maximize our resources thanks to the increased efficiencies, performance, and value. With NetApp our IT staff is able to spend less time focused on our storage infrastructure and instead apply valuable resources and time to other parts of the business to help provide our customers with the service they've come to expect."
  • Julie Eades, vice president, Global SMB Marketing, VMware
    "VMware is pleased to share a common vision and strategy with NetApp to deliver affordable and robust solutions and cloud services to our midsize customers. Additionally, VMware and NetApp will continue to partner with our joint service providers and channel partners to deliver solutions and cloud services that are simple, efficient, and flexible to serve as a foundation for our midsize customers to grow their businesses now and in the future."
  • Brian Babineau, vice president, Research and Analyst Services, Enterprise Strategy Group
    "The demands on midsize businesses continue to increase, which makes the IT infrastructure they build on as important as ever. The right infrastructure can provide midsize businesses with the flexibility required to adjust to their changing environment and grow their business along with the efficiency to help keep costs down. We see cloud services as another key layer to the IT infrastructure as they enable midsize businesses to maximize limited resources, pay only for the service levels they need, and easily expand as their business needs grow."
  • Julie Parrish, senior vice president of Worldwide Partner Sales, NetApp
    "There is no question that midsize businesses are making the transition to cloud-based solutions and value-added resellers will play an important role in helping to address this customer need. NetApp is providing our partners with a unique opportunity to be part of an ecosystem that will enable them to strengthen their customer relationships, build profitable new revenue streams, and take advantage of industry-leading enablement programs designed to help them transform their business to capitalize on the cloud."
  • Manish Goel, executive vice president of Products, NetApp
    "The growth of data and an ever-expanding competitive landscape combined with limited budgets and resources means that midsize businesses must make smart decisions when it comes to their IT infrastructure. The enhanced FAS2200 platform provides customers with the simplicity, flexibility, performance, and value they need while delivering a storage foundation that they can build on with confidence to achieve business success."

Availability and Pricing
The FAS2220 will start at under $8,000. It will be available on June 12, 2012, through NetApp's worldwide network of value-added authorized resellers, distributors, and systems integrators. DPaaS is available now through select NetApp VAR partners.

Additional Resources

1 Enterprise Storage Group, "Market Report: Cloud Integrated Storage," April 2012.

About NetApp
NetApp creates innovative storage and data management solutions that accelerate business breakthroughs and deliver outstanding cost efficiency. Discover NetApp's passion for helping companies around the world go further, faster at www.netapp.com.

Addendum: Partner Quote Sheet
NetApp is committed to helping its VARs capitalize on the cloud services business opportunity. Here is what some of NetApp's VARs say about participating in the GetSuccessful Cloud Services Program and the value in providing cloud services built on NetApp:

  • Paul Sweeney, managing director, ANS Group
    "ANS understands that cloud services present a significant business opportunity as many of our midsize customers are exploring the flexibility and efficiency it offers them. We recently participated in the NetApp GetSuccessful Cloud Services Program, which provided us with various best practices and resources that are fundamental to helping us build a cloud services model that is right for our business and our customers. We've had a very successful and long relationship with NetApp, and their commitment to the success of partners like ANS through unique programs like this will only strengthen that bond."
  • Robert Schendstok, sales manager for New Business, Bull Netherlands
    "NetApp is demonstrating clear leadership in cloud enablement with its GetSuccessful Cloud Services Program, and by sharing this high-level consulting approach NetApp is adding a lot of value to our go-to-market strategy. Based on the outcome of internal discussions we've had at the executive level combined with the NetApp workshop, we have come to the conclusion that Bull Netherlands should invest even more time and effort in developing its local cloud services based on a partner model. In this manner we can significantly reduce the time to market, the investments needed, and reduce the financial risk."
  • Kurt M. Klein, chief executive officer, CMT
    "Our midmarket customers are increasingly looking at cloud services as a way to make budgets go further, simplify administrative tasks, and gain access to enterprise capabilities so we see a business opportunity to help them realize these goals. The NetApp GetSuccessful program provided us with tools and expertise to explore best practices around cloud service business models and craft a cloud service strategy that works best for us. NetApp helped us solidify an actionable plan to bring cloud service offerings into our portfolio. NetApp continues to be a trusted partner, and this program is yet another example of NetApp's commitment to their partners' success."
  • Mark Marron, president, ePlus Technology
    "ePlus recognizes the value that cloud services provide our customers. The NetApp GetSuccessful with Cloud Services Program will give our executive team additional tools to further shape our cloud services strategy. With the latest information about key business and transitional issues relevant to tapping cloud service business opportunities, we'll strengthen our role as a trusted cloud advisor to customers -- helping them determine the vision, direction, and implementation of their cloud strategy. This program is another example of NetApp's industry leadership in providing innovative and valuable support to its partner community. We look forward to continuing to help customers reduce complexities, improve efficiencies, and lower costs."
  • Rob Vissers, sales director, i3 groep
    "Based upon the GetSuccessful Cloud Services Program we were able to move forward on three concrete steps in developing our cloud service strategy. First i3 groep will work with NetApp to jointly develop a business case based upon the Cloud Services Business Modeling Tool. We will then decide whether to build a service offering on our own or broker such a service with one of NetApp's service providers. Second, i3 groep will invest time to walk through the NetApp Service Provider Product Development process to understand potential leverage for partnering with NetApp to build a cloud service. Third, we will evaluate NetApp's proposed cloud training curriculum for educating our sales teams. This value-added training that NetApp has provided is invaluable and will help us map out the right path."
  • Mark Teter, chief technology officer, Advanced Systems Group
    "When customers frequently started asking about our cloud services, we knew it was time to investigate building our own or working with a service provider. Ultimately, we decided our best path to market was through a partnership with SunGard, a NetApp service provider partner. With SunGard, we launched our Recover from Cloud service in a matter of weeks, and they did a great job training our team to position the value of its NetApp based services. Overall, we're excited to offer our customers fully managed disk-based replication and recovery with a predictable monthly pricing model to better meet their business needs."
  • Adam Steinhoff, chief executive officer, DedicatedIT
    "Our clients expect their data to be available 100% of the time. DedicatedIT researched several avenues for offering a disaster recovery service, including building out a second data center and replicating at the OS level to Amazon or RackSpace. Building a second data center was too costly, and OS-level replication was not desirable because of the amount of configuration and monitoring involved. Finally we found a disaster recovery service provided by Net2Vault, a NetApp service provider partner. This solution was ideal, because we could replicate at the storage level and have servers that could be quickly provisioned in the event of a disaster for our customers."
  • Ken Yanneck, chief executive officer, IPLogic
    "Our midsized business customers are constantly seeking smarter ways to solve business challenges with constrained resources, and we've seen increased interest in using cloud services to lower costs and improve business outcomes, especially in the area of data protection. As a result we investigated building our own backup and disaster recovery services as well as a white label arrangement with a service provider. We decided we could provide secure enterprise-class recovery services and get to market faster by working with Net2Vault, a NetApp cloud service provider partner. Now we can meet our customers' needs as they seek cost-effective and labor-saving methods to better protect their business from lost productivity, revenue, and goodwill associated with data loss and downtime."
  • Rob Flannery, senior vice president of National Sales, Insight Integrated Systems
    "With customers' IT consumption patterns changing to incorporate more cloud services, Insight Integrated Systems made the decision to invest in building out our own cloud service offerings. NetApp was our platform of choice because it allows us to offer a range of services on a unified, highly efficient platform with enterprise SLAs. Key workloads that our midmarket customers seek from our cloud service portfolio include backup and disaster recovery as a service. NetApp helped us architect and roll those services out so that we could offer cost-effective, reliable, and secure disk-based data protection options to a greater percentage of our customer base through pay-as-you-go cloud service offerings. NetApp has again shown itself to be a great partner as we developed this new facet of our business."
  • Jason Clark, chief executive officer, Proact UK
    "Proact is a long-standing NetApp reseller and systems integrator focusing heavily on innovative solutions that help customers deliver their critical services. We evolved our heritage in traditional on-site solutions to develop a strong cloud services portfolio based on NetApp technology. Our services deliver enterprise-class security and availability along with ease of use and affordability -- perfect for the midsize business. Our use of the NetApp architecture means that customers benefit from capabilities long used in enterprise organizations: the speed and reliability of disk-based recovery, second-site failover, and the knowledge that their critical data is safe and business continuity strong."
  • Brooks Byerly, principal, Soccour Solutions
    "Cloud initiatives are a hot topic with many of our customers, and increasingly we are asked to leverage our expertise to help turn their cloud initiatives into reality. Building on existing successful partnerships with NetApp and SunGard made the decision simple for us to add SunGard's Recovery Service offering to our portfolio. SunGard's service built on NetApp provides our customers with an immediate solution to leverage the cloud to improve data protection."
  • Mark Benton, product manager, Systems Engineering
    "As a reseller we clearly see the value of offering our NetApp clients data protection services via the cloud. Through our work with Artisan, a NetApp service provider partner, we are able to offer a native disaster recovery solution as a service built on NetApp [called NetApp as a Service] with an incremental opex component. This enables our clients to double the value of their investment in NetApp."

Contact Information:

Press Contact:
Ryan Lowry
NetApp
(408) 822-7544
ryan.lowry@netapp.com

Tags

NetApp NTAP NetApp Data Storage NetApp Virtualization NetApp Storage Efficiency

Related Links