NetApp Ushers in Next Wave of Data Center Transformation
Sunnyvale, Calif. - February 12, 2008
-- NetApp (NASDAQ: NTAP) today announced new products and
capabilities as part of the NetApp® Manageability Software
Family to enable customers to transform their data center
architectures. Today's announcement is driven by NetApp storage
innovations for virtualized servers that will help customers
improve their IT infrastructure and processes. Enterprise customers
are undergoing significant data center transformations to enhance
IT flexibility and efficiency as server virtualization moves into
broader deployment. To enable this transformation, NetApp is
providing customers a proven storage platform for virtualized
environments to achieve increased service levels, higher asset
utilization, and greater data center power, space, and cooling
efficiencies.
"NetApp will be a major catalyst in enabling customers to
capitalize on the next generation of data center infrastructure,"
said Jay Kidd, chief marketing officer at NetApp. "Today we have
established a lead in delivering virtualization solutions and
services that help customers transform their current IT
architectures and amplify the impact that IT operations have on
their business. Combining VMware's full data center virtualization
solutions with NetApp's networked storage solutions is dramatically
improving data management and providing customers a path to
creating a transparent infrastructure."
"Our research indicates that IT departments are continually
challenged to do more with less, making it increasingly difficult
to manage infrastructure complexity while at the same time meet
service level agreements and increase staff productivity," said
Roger Cox, Research VP, Gartner. "Customers are looking for an
architectural approach that will deliver near instant response to
business unit requests, automate the most labor intensive tasks,
and scale infrastructure transparently over time."
Today's news further strengthens NetApp's unified data management
platform with the following new innovative software solutions to
drive customers' data center transformation:
- SnapManager® for Virtual
Infrastructure-SnapManager for Virtual Infrastructure
enables customers to protect their VMware environments with
automated data protection and recovery of their virtual machines.
SnapManager for Virtual Infrastructure dramatically reduces human
error and increases server utilization for application workloads by
eliminating the interruptions and performance impact caused by
traditional server-hosted backups and restores. As a result,
customers can protect their data more reliably. More information is
available at
http://www.netapp.com/us/products/management-software/snapmanager-virtual.html.
- SnapManager Compatibility with VMware Virtualization
Software-All Windows-based SnapManager products are now
compatible with VMware virtualization software, providing customers
the ability to manage data within virtual machines and take full
advantage of the application-specific data management capabilities
provided by NetApp's SnapManager products. Versions are available
for Exchange, SQL, SharePoint, and Oracle. By extending SnapManager
capabilities to virtual infrastructures, customers now have common
data management tools for both their virtualized and physical
server environments. These innovative products will also help
accelerate deployment of existing Windows applications into new
virtual server environments.
- Provisioning Manager-Provisioning Manager
provides policy-based automation to speed up existing provisioning
processes, improve capacity utilization, and reduce human error
that results in data loss. As a result, storage administrators can
eliminate the complex series of manual steps normally associated
with provisioning storage in both virtual and physical server
environments. This simplifies training for IT staff and liberates
these valuable personnel to work on more strategic IT priorities.
For more details, visit
http://www.netapp.com/us/products/management-software/provisioning.html.
"Virtualization is helping thousands of
enterprises reduce complexity and improve management of their data
centers," said Parag Patel, vice president, alliances at VMware.
"NetApp's new SnapManager for Virtual Infrastructure leverages
VMware virtualization for improved management and automation,
including virtual machine backup, restoration, replication, and
disaster recovery. Together, VMware and NetApp are helping
customers transform their IT infrastructures and increase
productivity to better respond to their changing business
needs."
"VMware and NetApp give us the best of both worlds, running virtual
applications and storing the images of virtual machines on NetApp
hardware," said Ed Grassie, director of Technology and
Infrastructure with BBM Canada, which provides broadcast
measurement and consumer behavior data to Canadian broadcasters,
advertisers, and agencies. "NetApp solutions supply the data
storage power while VMware virtualization software enables us to
distribute data and processing the way that we want. NetApp enables
us to protect our data with immediate mirroring to remote systems
to support disaster recovery. This provides extra time so we can
either deliver the data earlier to customers or recover from other
issues or problems along the way."
Significant enhancements to NetApp's Protection Manager provide
seamless protection of virtualized environments. In addition,
updates to NetApp's Data ONTAP® operating system extend
deduplication benefits to customers with NetApp V-Series and
MultiStore® systems. Furthermore, Data ONTAP SMI-S Agent,
which conforms to the SNIA Storage Management Initiative
Specification (SMI-S), is now available to support the entire line
of NetApp FAS systems and NetApp V-Series virtualized storage
systems. These enhancements extend customers' ability to meet
increasingly diverse storage and data management requirements with
a single, familiar, easy-to-use data management platform.
NetApp Improves Storage Efficiency in
Virtualized Environments
NetApp's high-performance storage solutions were specifically
developed to transform data center technology into a competitive
business advantage. As a result, many NetApp customers are
realizing significant storage efficiency savings as part of their
data center transformation. In a recent study by Oliver Wyman,
Making Green IT a Reality: Customer Perspectives on the Impact
of Storage Vendor Decisions on Power, Cooling, & Space in
Enterprise Data Centers (http://www.netapp.com/library/ar/ar1054.pdf),
customers using NetApp, EMC CLARiiON, and HP EVA systems concluded
that innovative NetApp technologies such as deduplication, thin
provisioning, RAID-DP™, FlexVol®, and Snapshot™
dramatically reduce the amount of power, cooling, and space needed
in their data centers. Customers found that NetApp requires 50%
less raw storage and rack space and uses 51% less power and heat
load per usable terabyte.
"Our biggest challenge was controlling our data growth while at the
same time meeting customer service levels," said Chris Rima,
supervisor, IT Systems, Information Services, with Tucson Electric
Power. "We undertook an ambitious project to virtualize our IT
infrastructure and we needed a storage system that would deliver
data protection for our rapidly growing virtual storage
environment. NetApp delivered fast, cost-effective backup and
restore of our virtual machines and enabled us to quadruple our
storage capacity without increasing administrative headcount,
saving at least $2 million over a three to five year period. Most
importantly, we have streamlined operations and significantly
improved client satisfaction by reducing backup and recovery time,
reducing time required to provision new servers or roll back test
and development environments, thus shortening lead time for new
applications and improving availability and performance of
server-based applications through the integrated use of NetApp and
VMware technologies."
New Virtualization Professional
Services
In addition to today's product news, NetApp announced the following
new virtualization professional services to accelerate customers'
data center transformation:
- Virtualization Assessment-Provides customers
with guidance on how to start benefiting from a virtualized
platform
- Virtualization Architecture Planning-Helps
customers design the most efficient server and storage
infrastructure for their unique environment and business needs
- Server & Storage Virtualization
Services-Guides customers as they build the optimal server
platform based on VMware virtualization software and a set of
turnkey service offerings
NetApp Authorized
Professional Service Partner Program
NetApp is also strengthening its commitment to help channel
partners provide the highest levels of quality and consistency with
a new Authorized Professional Service Partner Program. With this
program, partners now have the ability to sell and deliver their
own brand of professional services for NetApp solutions utilizing
NetApp best practices, tools and methodologies, comprehensive
training, and implementation backup support. Partners in this
program will be uniquely positioned to serve as trusted advisors
for a complete solution set and deliver maximum value to NetApp
customers. For more information, please see today's separate press
release at: http://www.netapp.com/us/company/news/news_rel_20080212b.html.
Additional Resources
For an example of how NetApp is helping customers with their data
center transformation, read how NetApp created its Kilo Client lab,
the world's largest commercial computing and storage grid
architecture. Information is available in today's separate press
release at
http://www.netapp.com/us/company/news/press-releases/news_rel_20080212a.html
and the NetApp Kilo Client technical case study located at http://www.netapp.com/us/library/technical-reports/tr-3566.html.
In addition, NetApp's own IT organization reduced the space, power,
and cooling in its data center and avoided the need for a $5
million data center expansion project. Best practices are also
available in a white paper, 10 Techniques for Improving Data
Center Power Efficiency, which details how to reduce power
consumption through innovative facilities design. Visit www.netapp.com/ftp/wp-netapp-data-center-power-efficiency.pdf
to learn more.
Visit NetApp TechTalk Online Events at http://www.netapp.com/news/techtalk/podcasts-on-demand.html
for a podcast with Jay Kidd, NetApp's chief marketing officer, who
shares his perspective on customers' data center transformation and
recommendations to get started; an interview with Ralph Renne, site
operations manager at NetApp, discussing NetApp's own data center
project to improve data center power efficiency; and a podcast with
Gregg Ferguson, solutions development manager at NetApp's
Virtualization and Grid Infrastructure Business Unit, discussing
NetApp's innovative Kilo Client lab.
NetApp TechTalk Webcast
NetApp will host a Webcast, Transform Your Data Center, on
Tuesday, February 26, from 11:00 a.m.-12:00 p.m. Pacific Time. To
register, go to
http://communicate.netapp.com/forms/verify?seminarID=20080226WOD.
Pricing and Availability
All customer pricing for products described in this press release
is available from NetApp sales or reseller partners. SnapManager
for Virtual Infrastructure, Provisioning Manager, Protection
Manager, and Data ONTAP 7.3 are expected to be available in spring
2008. New virtualization services and the Authorized Professional
Service Partner Program are available immediately.
About NetApp
NetApp is a leading provider of innovative data management
solutions that simplify the complexity of storing, managing,
protecting, and retaining enterprise data. Market leaders around
the world choose NetApp to help them reduce cost, minimize risk,
and adapt to change. For solutions that deliver unmatched
simplicity and value, visit us on the Web at www.netapp.com.
"Safe Harbor" Statement under U.S. Private Securities
Litigation Reform Act of 1995"
The statement regarding availability of SnapManager for Virtual
Infrastructure, Provisioning Manager, Protection Manager, and Data
ONTAP 7.3 in spring 2008 is a forward-looking statement with the
meaning of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of
1995. Forward-looking statements include any statements regarding
future events or the future financial performance of Network
Appliance Inc. that involves risks or uncertainties. In evaluating
these statements readers should specifically consider various
factors that could cause actual events or results to differ
materially form those indicated, including without limitation,
ability of third parties to deliver products and components on a
timely basis, customer demand for products and services, customer
acceptance of product architectures, increased competition, and
other important factors as described in Network Appliance Inc.
reports and documents filed from time to time with the Securities
and Exchange Commission, including its most recently submitted 10-K
and 10-Q.
Press Contact:
Roger Villareal
Network Appliance, Inc.
408-822-1959
rogerv@netapp.com