Partner POV | How NetApp is Changing the Game with AI

This article was written by Mike McNamara, a senior leader of product and solution marketing at NetApp.

Since 2018, NetApp AI has enabled customers to integrate their data fabric across edge, core, and cloud. Our unified data management supports seamless, cost-effective data movement across the hybrid multicloud environment, and our world-class partner ecosystem provides full technical integrations with AI.

We have earned a variety of prestigious AI industry awards and accolades over the years. However, two recent accolades are exciting to highlight in detail, because they acknowledge the work we've done around AI and cloud and why it's so important to our customers.

The first new report is an IDC MarketScape, Worldwide Scale-Out File-Based Storage 2019 Vendor Assessment (1), in which we are considered a leader. The reason this is important, aside from the positioning, is that NetApp® ONTAP® AI is based on scale-out file-based storage. As the IDC MarketScape said, many traditional file system providers consider artificial intelligence (AI), deep learning (DL), and machine learning (ML) to be potential areas of growth and partner with NVIDIA to bring robust infrastructure for AI/DL/ML workloads. NetApp is a shown to be a Leader with our file-based storage (FBS) offerings.

The IDC MarketScape vendor analysis model is designed to provide an overview of the competitive fitness of information and communications technology (ICT) suppliers in a given market. The research methodology utilizes a rigorous scoring methodology based on both qualitative and quantitative criteria that results in a single graphical illustration of each vendor's position within a given market. The Capabilities score measures vendor product, go-to-market, and business execution in the short term. The Strategy score measures alignment of vendor strategies with customer requirements in a 3-to-5-year time frame. Vendor market share is represented by the size of the icons. (Source: IDC)

Furthermore, customers benefit from NetApp FBS offerings because it "runs in a unified platform with functionality such as storage efficiency, data protection, security, high availability, integrated replication, backup, and tiering," the IDC MarketScape noted.  

Remember that NetApp ONTAP is the software that powers file-based storage across our portfolio, which includes NetApp AFF, hybrid-flash FAS, and software-defined NetApp ONTAP Select. 

"NetApp's FBS offering is a very well-established offering in the market with worldwide adoption across several workloads and use cases," the IDC MarketScape said. "NetApp has an extensive and loyal customer base that is well skilled in the use of ONTAP and may lead to adoption of ONTAP in the public cloud."

We agree strongly with the IDC MarketScape, which noted that "support for hybrid cloud and multicloud capabilities are a must for any storage platform, especially FBS. As customers strategize infrastructure road maps with cloud-first strategy, it is imperative that file-based storage solutions offer the flexibility of deployment on-premises as well as in the public cloud."

A New NetApp

The second IDC report, A New NetApp Is on the Rise (2), said that NetApp not only is a leader in the industry, but is helping customers implement digital transformation in meaningful ways.

"Established enterprise storage vendors that want to stay in business as the industry transitions to enable digital transformation need to change their business models as well," said Eric Burgener, research vice president, Infrastructure Systems, Platforms and Technologies at IDC. "NetApp has been very open about discussing its own evolution as an enterprise vendor, and it is clear how it is changing the company and how it deals with customers to drive improvements in the overall customer experience."

Through innovation, excellence, and customer focus, the IDC report said that NetApp is setting the bar across the industry. More than just a laundry list of technical achievements, IDC's analysis points to the groundbreaking strategies that can help transform enterprises. For those customers who want to achieve unprecedented success in their field, especially in high-performance areas like AI, IDC pointed to NetApp.

It's no accident that NetApp is getting noticed for its success in cloud, AI, and the supporting technologies that help companies in their digital transformation. Our goal has always been to provide the right solutions for our customers and help them on their cloud-first, data-driven journey.

(1) IDC, "IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Scale-Out File-Based Storage 2019 Vendor Assessment," #US45355019e, December 2019. 

(2) IDC, "A New NetApp Is on the Rise," by Eric Burgener, #US45948920, February 2020.