Today at INSIGHT 2021, NetApp announced new additions and enhanced capabilities across its hybrid cloud portfolio to help organizations modernize their IT infrastructures and accelerate digital transformation. Delivering new secure ways to consume and operate data services on-premises and in the cloud, NetApp hybrid cloud solutions make it simpler for enterprise customers to put their data to work — wherever and whenever they need it.
With the latest release of ONTAP, NetApp is introducing enhanced protection against ransomware, expanded data management capabilities, and NVMe/TCP support for accelerated performance. The company is also announcing new digital wallet capabilities for NetApp Cloud Manager and enhanced data services for simplified administration across a hybrid cloud, more flexible consumption options to better control costs, as well as new Professional Services offerings to help customers unlock the full value of on-premises and hybrid cloud resources.
NetApp’s latest portfolio innovations announced today include:
• ONTAP Data Management Software Enhancements: The latest release of ONTAP enables enterprises to autonomously protect against ransomware attacks based on machine learning with integrated preemptive detection and accelerated data recovery. The new release also delivers enterprise-grade performance for SAN and modern workloads with NVMe/TCP support, expanded object storage capabilities, and simplified management. In addition, this latest ONTAP release will power the upcoming NetApp AFF A900, the next-generation high-resiliency all-flash system for business-critical workloads.
• Enhanced Data Services: With new digital wallet capabilities available in NetApp Cloud Manager, customers can benefit from greater mobility and more visibility into usage of data service licenses across a hybrid cloud, with prepayment of credits enabling streamlined deployment to avoid procurement hassles. Additional updates include enhancements to NetApp Cloud Backup and Cloud Data Sense services, simplified deployment of Cloud Volumes ONTAP with new customer-ready templates, fully embedded Active IQ, and deeper integrations with NetApp Cloud Insights and ONTAP software to support Kubernetes workloads.
• More Flexible Consumption Options: NetApp Keystone Flex Subscription, an on-premises storage-as-a-service offering with native cloud integration, continues to gain momentum with customers. The offering is now supported on four continents—encompassing petabytes of capacity within just under one year of availability. NetApp is now offering a new freemium service tier for Cloud Volumes ONTAP, providing customers with access to a fully featured, perpetual license to use ONTAP in the cloud for workloads needing less than 500GB of storage. This consumption flexibility gives organizations the freedom to use enterprise-grade data services for small workloads such as Kubernetes clusters at no initial cost. An organization only needs to convert to a subscription when the workload matures and scales.
• More Accessible Hybrid Cloud Expertise: NetApp is also introducing new Support and Professional Services offerings to make it even easier to access experts for step-by-step guidance as they transition to hybrid cloud. With SupportEdge Advisor for Cloud, NetApp is extending its data center support model to cloud services with rapid, direct access to trained specialists. NetApp Flexible Professional Services (FlexPS) is also available for customers that require on-demand and ongoing support as they transition to a hybrid cloud. With this new subscription-based offering, organizations can get the professional help they need to design and build a data fabric strategy, implement solutions, and optimize their hybrid cloud with predictable costs and avoid procurement delays.