NetApp Plans Flash Leadership with ONTAP 9

With the troublesome ghosts of the Clustered Data Ontap (CDOT) challenge story behind it, NetApp is bringing out the novel version of its Ontap storage operating system. Ontap 9 will primarily focus on Flash, NetApp arrives to the digital spotlight supporting 15 TB solid- state drives with the promise of delivering 4-1 data reduction through deduplication.

Rajender Singh Bhandari, Director Systems Engineering NetApp had this to say to the DQ Week “with ONTAP 9 software, enterprises can quickly integrate the best of traditional and emerging technologies, incorporating flash, the cloud and software-defined architectures to build a Data Fabric foundation across on-premises and cloud resources. ONTAP 9 software is optimized for flash with improved performance and capacity utilization. With every Indian enterprise embracing and embarking on its digitalisation journey, ONTAP9 is the survival tool for the digital age and we anticipate Indian Enterprises to leverage all that ONTAP9 can enable in their march towards digital efficiency.”

NetApp from its part has enjoyed its acmes and peaks in the Flash Storage space for a considerable period in the Global Digital landscape and it is in this context that Parag Amalnerkar, Director-Marketing, NetApp India and SAARC defines NetApp’s GTM plan of action in the event of the ONTAP9 being red carpeted. These are dileanted broadly as:

• Triumvirate of distinct ways to be able to address and cover the India market: Enterprise, followed by Commercial & Government

• The enterprise motion is aimed at solving Data management challenges of large enterprises; these are a defined set of enterprises pursued through a senior & high touch sales & pre-sales team. These cut across verticals reading in the order, namely, BFSI, Telecom, IT/ITeS and Manufacturing.

• The market outside of this defined enterprise space stands commercial & SMB for NetApp. This is pursued through a territory based model where our sales leaders in each territory address the market through a set of channel partners. This entails the process of investment in training, certifying channel partners every quarter and provide them with resources needed to drive demand in their markets.

• The Government pursuit currently focuses on Smart cities, Safe Cities and state specific projects where NetApp’s Data Fabric architecture coupled with Flash facilaites the administration to innovatively drive citizen services.

With the coming of ONTAP9 in the Flash and Cloud Storage universe, the Writing on the Wall for now is that Enterprises has to wait and watch for the pluses that trails along as this Data Storage Software cleaves its niche.