LONDON - November 8, 2011 -
Midsize businesses are under tremendous pressure to keep pace with
growing business demands and to do more with fewer resources. Many
of these businesses have turned to virtualisation to improve cost
savings, modernise their applications, and consolidate their IT
infrastructure to gain competitive advantage. As data volumes
continue to expand at explosive rates and demands on the business
continue to expand beyond IT budgets, the decisions these companies
make now about their IT infrastructure are foundational to their
business success today and in the future.
NetApp (NASDAQ: NTAP) today announced that it
has strengthened its entry product and solutions portfolio for
midsize businesses to deliver greater value to both customers and
partners. The new NetApp® FAS2000 entry product line delivers
improved value, simplicity, performance, and scalability to enable
customers to start right and grow with the needs of their
businesses.
"Midsize businesses are facing unique
challenges as a result of increasing business demands and the need
to do more with fewer resources," said Tom Georgens, president and
chief executive officer, NetApp. "We understand that customers
should not be forced to make a tradeoff between affordability and
'good enough' technology. With solutions that are priced and
packaged to address this growing market, NetApp is uniquely
positioned to help our customers succeed and build a solid
foundation that can expand and adapt as their business and
priorities change."
Enhanced Midsize Business Portfolio
Delivers Value, Performance, Simplicity and Efficiency
- Performance and Scalability: NetApp's powerful
new FAS2240, the latest offering in NetApp's entry FAS2000 series,
delivers two to three times performance improvement and greater
flexibility, allowing customers to maximize storage investments,
support demanding workloads, and add enhanced capabilities as
needed as their business needs change.
- Simplicity: NetApp OnCommand™ System
Manager 2.0 is designed specifically for the IT generalist to
simplify, control, and automate both setup and ongoing management
of NetApp storage. This simple and easy-to-use management tool is
provided with the purchase of these systems to help customers
improve their storage and service efficiency, boost productivity,
and reduce the impact of storage management on limited IT
resources.
- NetApp Data ONTAP®: The FAS2000 series
runs the latest version of the Data ONTAP operating system to
provide customers with a unified, scalable platform that supports
multiple workloads and delivers the flexibility to meet their
growing business requirements.
- Unified, Scalable Architecture: NetApp offers
a truly unified, scalable architecture that enables customers to
easily and affordably upgrade to higher-end systems and new
capabilities without the need for forklift upgrades. NetApp's
innovative unified platform is currently unmatched in the industry
and helps customers to meet current and future requirements for
architecting scalable, efficient, and flexible
infrastructures.
- Industry-Leading Efficiency: With NetApp,
midsize customers benefit from the industry-leading efficiencies
for which NetApp is widely known in the industry. While other
storage vendors offer only one or two storage efficiency
technologies, NetApp offers nine integrated technologies, which
have helped customers save $11 billion and more than 4.6 exabytes
of storage[3]
in total.
Proven History of Success with
Midsize Businesses
- NetApp brings an established track record of success in the
midsize business segment, and more than 10,000 midsize businesses
turn to NetApp each year for their storage needs.
- The company is widely recognized in the industry by notable
third parties and has been declared a top vendor in numerous
categories for delivering outstanding customer value, innovative
technology, and product quality.
- Storage Magazine[1] ranked NetApp the number one solution for
virtualised environments, and the company also earned the
publication's top spot in the
Quality Award survey for midrange systems.
- TheInfoPro[2], based on their unique methodology of
one-on-one interviews with storage professionals, identifies NetApp
as the lead vendor in use by midsize enterprises for optimisation
technologies including Solid State Cache and Online Data
Reduction/Deduplication.
- According to Forrester Research Inc.'s
Market Overview: Midrange Storage, Q32011 report issued August
29, 2011, "NetApp provides the leading unified solution. It
continues to expand its portfolio and grow within the market."
Industry-Leading NetApp Partner
Program Is Critical to Fueling Midsize Customer
Success
- NetApp's strategy to leverage diverse pathways for growth has
played an important role in furthering the company's impressive
success in the midsize business segment.
- A key component of this strategy is NetApp's commitment to its
vast ecosystem of channel partners, who serve as trusted advisors
to the midsize business segment and give NetApp a critical pathway
to these customers.
- NetApp's enhanced product portfolio, pricing, and packaging
options optimised for midsize businesses, enable NetApp Partners to
offer the best technologies and solutions to grow their own
businesses, increase profits, and help their customers
succeed.
- In fact, the Maia Strategy Group recently conducted a survey of
channel resellers worldwide who are part of the NetApp Partner
Program and who also partner with other storage vendors. According
to the analysis:
- The partners surveyed align with NetApp because of the strong
value proposition that NetApp's technology offers midsize business
customers.
- These partners view NetApp as having superior technology for
the midsize market when compared to other vendors.
- The study revealed that partners view NetApp products as highly
competitive for the middle and upper end of the midsize business
market, citing flexibility and adaptability across a range of
systems as key advantages for NetApp solutions.
Supporting Quotes
- Brian Babineau, vice president, Enterprise Strategy
Group
"In today's challenging economic environment, it is very easy to
focus on making IT buying decisions based on acquisition cost.
Unfortunately, far too many midsize business realise that
operational expenses involving system tuning, application
integration, and solution availability can quickly outpace an
initial investment. We consistently advise these organisations to
consider IT infrastructure offerings that can support a variety of
workloads allowing limited resources to achieve management
economies of scale."
- Chelo Picardal, chief technology officer, City of
Bellevue
"As a growing, thriving metropolis with 35% annual data growth and
limited resources, the City of Bellevue is constantly striving to
do more with less and make the most of its IT investments. Our
NetApp storage solution has enabled us to meet expanding business
demands amid budget reductions. With NetApp we have gained
outstanding performance, scalability, and efficiency, resulting in
better services to our customers-the city departments that serve
our growing population of more than 122,000 residents."
- Tim Torres, vice president, Technical Operations,
Merced Systems
"Our IT staff is comprised of a very small team of IT generalists
supporting multiple functions across the organisation. As our
business continues to grow, ease of use, reliability, and
automation are all key criteria that we look at as we evaluate any
technologies we deploy. NetApp has met all of those requirements
and delivered powerful capabilities, scalability, and flexibility
to help us control costs, maximize our investment, and yield the
highest payback."
- Ken Danila, IT operations manager, VHB
"At VHB, our primary focus is on helping our customers solve the
nation's most complex transportation, land development and
environmental infrastructure and development challenges. NetApp's
storage solutions are central to connecting the two most vital
assets for the success of our business: our people and our data.
Choosing NetApp is one of the smartest decisions I have made at
VHB, and they have done a great job of addressing the midsize
market with an enterprise-class solution that is simple, scalable,
and offered at an attractive price point."
- Julie Parrish, senior vice president of Global Partner
Sales, NetApp
"NetApp's history of success in the midsize business market can be
attributed to our strong and enduring partnerships. With today's
announcement, NetApp is combining powerful solutions for midsize
businesses with the best partner program in the industry to create
compelling opportunities for continued partner success now and into
the future."
Availability and
Pricing
As part of today's announcement, NetApp is offering new lower
pricing options for the FAS2040 to deliver greater value and
long-term savings, allowing customers to grow their business
without outgrowing their storage investments. The NetApp FAS2000
series systems start at GBP 5,330 and can be ordered today through
NetApp's worldwide network of value-added authorized resellers,
distributors, and systems integrators. For more information, visit
www.netapp.com/uk/how-to-buy.
Additional Resources
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/uk.
Press Contact:
Champion Communications
0207 637 2587
netapp@championcomms.com
NetApp, the NetApp logo, Go further,
faster, Data ONTAP, and OnCommand are trademarks or registered
trademarks of NetApp, Inc. in the United States and/or other
countries. All other brands or products are trademarks or
registered trademarks of their respective holders and should be
treated as such.
[1]Storage Magazine, "Quality Awards Survey for
Midrange Systems," September 2011, and "Quality Awards: Enterprise
Storage," March 2011
[2]TheInfoPro (a division of The 451 Group),
"TheInfoPro Storage Study Technology Roadmap Report, Wave 15 -
1H2011"
[3]Data from My AutoSupport, a Web-based tool that
offers a comprehensive view into the health, performance, and
storage efficiency of any NetApp storage system