NetApp® Keystone Program Reshapes Customer Experience

NetApp is bringing a new, more simplified cloud experience to the enterprise, both on-premises and off-premises, with a consumption model that’s as easy as 1-2-3.

NetApp, the leader in hybrid cloud data management, today announced the NetApp® Keystone program, which reshapes the customer experience by providing a range of flexible solutions for customers, whether they choose to build or buy their cloud infrastructure.

Enterprises are in full swing of digital transformation to enhance their competitive advantage. They need to accelerate innovation in today's real world, in addition to dealing with the complex reality of data and resources everywhere. To address this complexity, today's IT environment must be transformed. While the industry has been focused on meeting these needs from a technology perspective, incremental improvements in funding options and upgrade processes have not kept pace with the development of demand so far.

“While the advent of hybrid multicloud brings incredible potential, it also creates an increasingly complex environment. At the same time, budgets have been shrinking this year, creating a critical need to optimize and streamline how infrastructure is orchestrated and managed, while also considering the economics of IT purchases,” said Ashish Nadkarni, vice president, Infrastructure Systems, Platforms, and Technologies at IDC. “By introducing flexible consumption models and automation-focused products, NetApp is not only dramatically simplifying the use of its products and services, but it is also making it easier for IT leaders to modernize, monitor, and manage their entire infrastructure.”

“Cloud is the benchmark for customer experience in today’s world,” said George Kurian, CEO of NetApp. “We have built and delivered our Data Fabric strategy to help customers simplify and modernize their data centers for success in the hybrid cloud era. The solutions we are announcing today are an extension of the Data Fabric’s mission to simplify and integrate data infrastructure, with new and flexible consumption models that will do the same for the business.”

NetApp's vision is to simplify data services for customers from every angle: from how customers buy and use products and services, to how they run them in their environments, and to who provides services to them. As a leader in storage systems and software [1] and an innovator in cloud services, NetApp's business has grown nearly 200% year over year. Only NetApp can provide customers with a comprehensive set of capabilities to help them build and manage their own unique Data Fabric, removing the economic, operational, and technical barriers that enterprises face when adopting hybrid multi-cloud environments.

NetApp Keystone: Reinventing the Customer Experience

The NetApp Keystone program is designed to provide customers with a range of flexible solutions. Whether customers choose to build cloud infrastructure on-premises or off-premises, or choose to purchase cloud infrastructure, Keystone provides the flexibility, pay-per-use economics, dynamic scalability, and operational simplicity they need to use cloud on their own terms.

Keystone has the following advantages:

Flexible mix-and-match purchase and subscription payment methods;

Run any NetApp service in any environment (on-premises, in the cloud, and in hybrid clouds);

Freedom to choose the management method - hosted by NetApp or a partner, or managed in-house;

Enjoy a more simplified experience that’s easier to buy, operate, and scale with NetApp’s latest generation of all-flash and hybrid flash arrays: the A400, FAS8300, and FAS8700.

In hybrid multi-cloud environments, IT teams need more choice, flexibility and freedom to run and pay for data services the way they want, and Keystone is designed to meet these real needs.

“NetApp’s Data Fabric strategy has become a critical element in how we help customers modernize their infrastructure,” said Ken Farber, president of ePlus Software. “With Keystone, we can help customers build Data Fabrics through a simplified consumption model that also simplifies the experience and complexity of hybrid multicloud.”

Important portfolio updates

In addition to the new program and more simplified customer experience, NetApp also announced numerous updates across its entire portfolio, including a range of new products, enhancements, and integration options.

AIOps. New integrated solutions from Active IQ® and Cloud Insights provide access to NetApp’s exponentially growing data lake of IT infrastructure intelligence to solve problems in real time, with a single click, across hybrid multicloud environments;

Data security and protection built for hybrid multicloud. Regardless of the cloud you choose, new data services provide security and compliance for critical infrastructure, in addition to enterprise-grade protection and cloud data tiering;

New software and systems meet the needs of new and traditional enterprise applications. New flash storage systems and solutions and updates to NetApp ONTAP® bring a wide range of performance options and simplicity to support modern enterprise applications. In addition, AFF all-SAN arrays provide best-in-class flexibility and record performance for the mid-market;

DevOps without cloud constraints. NetApp has created a redesigned model using Kubernetes that enables true application portability and addresses the economics and complexity that plague modern DevOps. NetApp has completed its own transformation to connect three different solutions used internally, and NetApp's transformation experience can provide a reference case for customers who want to avoid vendor lock-in, directly migrate their entire infrastructure, and flexibly handle workloads anytime, anywhere.

Lenovo NetApp was jointly established in China by Lenovo, a global technology leader that promotes intelligent transformation, and NetApp, a global authority in hybrid cloud data management. Through the implementation of a dual-brand strategy, Lenovo NetApp provides Chinese companies with a full range of NetApp-branded products and solutions as well as Lenovo-branded OEM product portfolios. The products and solutions released this time will be provided to Chinese customers through Lenovo NetApp.

[1] Gartner Magic Quadrant for Primary Storage, September 17, 2019