Companies Strengthen Global Partnership  to Help Customers Modernize with Multi-Cloud

New and innovative solutions help organizations to cost-effectively and seamlessly  migrate and modernize enterprise workloads while optimizing and accelerating  traditional and modern applications on-premises.

NetApp® (NASDAQ: NTAP), a global, cloud-led, data centric software company and VMware, Inc. (NYSE: VMW) today announced the  expansion of the companies’ longstanding global alliance. Through innovative solutions  and go-to-market initiatives, NetApp and VMware are helping customers reduce the cost,  complexity and risk of migrating and modernizing enterprise-class workloads in multi cloud environments. In addition, organizations can accelerate the performance and  delivery of both traditional and new modern applications, and simplify daily operations  through new integrations between VMware and NetApp data management infrastructure. 

The NetApp and VMware partnership is built on the foundation of shared experience  supporting twenty thousand mutual customers over more than 20 years. NetApp is a  consistent VMware strategic design partner for current and future VMware Cloud offerings  including VMware vSphere, VMware Cloud Foundation and several VMware Cross-Cloud  services. NetApp and VMware are helping customers to effectively manage, share and  protect their hybrid and multi-cloud environments by collaborating on customer-driven co 

engineering to offer innovative solutions across an ever-changing technology landscape. 

“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.” 

“At this stage it’s clear: Multi-cloud 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.” 

“Building on more than two decades of co-innovation, we are glad to see an expanded  and strengthened alliance between NetApp and VMware,” said Sanjay Rohatgi, Senior  Vice President and General Manager, NetApp Asia Pacific & Japan. “As APAC  organizations transform their digital infrastructure to prepare for the hybrid multi-cloud  era, NetApp will continue to bring together the best technology partners to support the  ecosystem, every step of the way.”

NetApp and VMware: Powering the Multi-Cloud Era 

The new wave of modern applications powering this digital age requires an innovative  approach to enterprise workload and data management infrastructure. Organizations  today are turning to the public cloud to simplify and accelerate their business initiatives and require flexibility and choice across leading public cloud providers. These  organizations also need new, and integrated platforms that can manage both enterprise  and modern applications while efficiently utilizing existing resources. The renewed  partnership between NetApp and VMware addresses these challenges through focusing  on three major customer-driven initiatives: 

• Cost-Effective & Seamless Migration to Multi-Cloud – NetApp and VMware are  currently innovating together across the world’s three largest public cloud providers  to certify and support VMware Cloud and NetApp Cloud Services. This helps  customers running on VMware utilizing either NetApp or non-NetApp storage  environments on-premises to seamlessly migrate, extend or protect data 

demanding enterprise workloads and files to the cloud with reduced cost and risk.  Customers can now right-size their cloud compute and storage architectures to  reduce and control the costs of running data-demanding workloads in the cloud at  scale, while also avoiding the costs of refactoring applications from on-premises  into the cloud. NetApp and VMware have taken their decades of experience in  managing enterprise workloads in the data center to deliver fully certified,  integrated and supported solutions that bring these same benefits to customers  leveraging the public cloud, all built on a trusted workload and data management  foundation. 

• Accelerate Modernized Applications Using Kubernetes/Containers –VMware  Cloud Foundation with Tanzu allows IT to manage virtual machines and  orchestrate containers from one unified platform. VMware Tanzu and VMware  Cloud Foundation support the use of NetApp ONTAP-based storage arrays,  providing customers the ability to seamlessly build out a flexible data fabric for  traditional VMs and modern, containerized applications. For Kubernetes  workloads, NetApp is a design partner with VMware Tanzu container-native  storage integrating Astra Control with VMware Tanzu for VMware vSphere Virtual  Volumes (vVols) deployments. Customers can now simplify and accelerate new  modern application development and deployment alongside traditional virtualized  workloads using enterprise-scale, high-performance and protected solutions that  are jointly validated and supported.  

• Optimize The Data Center Through Modernized Infrastructure –Organizations  today require an efficient, cost-effective workload and data management platform  to optimize existing resources. NetApp is a VMware co-design partner with  vSphere and vVols for new and expanded support of key technologies from  NetApp file and block storage platforms. This includes new certification and  support to enable the use of vVols with NVMe-oF to allow enhanced block storage  flash performance and more granular VM storage management over multiple types 

of network transports from FC, ethernet, and standard TCP/IP networks. This also  includes new integration to enhance the availability and security of running  virtualized workloads across NFS 4.1 environments. Customers can now unlock  more performance for traditional virtualized workloads leveraging existing  infrastructure investments while simplifying daily IT operations through jointly  validated and supported solutions. 

Analyst and Customer Commentary 

“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.”  

“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.” 

“Be The Match helps thousands of people fighting blood cancers or blood diseases  receive a potentially life-saving transplant each year by matching patients to donors  through our national registry,” said Rob Hanson, Vice President, Technology Officer at  Be The Match. “Our partnerships with NetApp and VMware allow us to efficiently manage  twenty million records, benefiting from their commitments to continuous security and  product innovation – key principles important to our mission. By reducing the risks of data  loss while improving the productivity of our database and storage administration teams,  they’re helping us bring together data from physicians, providers, donors, and  researchers to have an invaluable impact on our patients.”