At NetApp, we have a rich history of building strong relationships with our partners and evolving to meet their needs. As NetApp continues to transform as a technology company, so do our products and services. Technology and business models are changing across the board, and we are committed to keep innovating to make us a partner of choice.

We want our partners and customers to know that we understand digital transformation, not just because we work with technology to help them achieve it, but because we are doing it ourselves. We also know the market moves fast and customers have choices. We want to make it easier for organisations to know the depth and breadth of what we offer, together with our partners. Instead of hearing people say, “Oh, I didn’t know NetApp did that,” we want them to say, “I’m so glad that NetApp can do that for us.”

Along this journey, NetApp has marked some stellar achievements, especially in the past six months. It has been a true collective effort that’s worth reflecting on, both to recognize the talented people who have made it happen and to build awareness of NetApp’s strengths and capabilities. Why does that matter? Because as IDC noted in its analysis, “A New NetApp Is on the Rise”:

“This is clearly no longer the NetApp that you may have known from the past … the company is very intelligently making strategic investments in those areas of differentiation that are key to digital transformation.”[i]

As a technology company with a long history in data storage, NetApp is continually reinventing our business, building on our core strengths and expanding what we offer to meet new needs. NetApp’s products and services are making a real difference for our partners and our customers, and I believe our continued success requires making sure that customers know where we excel and why. Put more simply, more people need to know what we do.

We’re excited to be an industry leader in flash technologies. We’re thrilled about the partnerships we’ve launched with the cloud hyperscalers—Amazon, Google and Microsoft—to support customers on their journey to the cloud. And we’re exceedingly proud of the work we have put into transforming what NetApp offers and how we offer it, including the incredible work we do through our partner channels.

For all our efforts, NetApp is also grateful to be recognized by leading industry analysts, who have noticed how NetApp is evolving. Here is a recap of some key highlights that are especially relevant to our partners:

NetApp is a Leader in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Primary Storage

In 2019, NetApp was recognized as a Leader in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Primary Storage. What makes someone a Leader? According to Gartner’s description, Leaders “have demonstrated the vision necessary to sustain their market position as requirements evolve. The hallmark of Leaders is that they focus on, and invest in, their offerings to the point where they lead the market and can affect its overall direction.”[ii] Here is part of what Gartner expressed about NetApp:

“NetApp’s Data Fabric strategy has enabled the company to position itself as a storage solution for hybrid IT environments… Most major primary storage vendors have a cloud strategy, but, to date, NetApp ONTAP delivers the deepest integration with the largest cloud storage service providers (Amazon, Google and Microsoft). NetApp storage arrays in private data centers can replicate, back up or archive data to public cloud in addition to enabling hybrid-cloud-based application architectures.”[iii]

The Magic Quadrant for Primary Storage replaces two previous Magic Quadrants: The Magic Quadrant for Solid-State Arrays and the Magic Quadrant for General-Purpose Storage Arrays. Gartner first recognized NetApp in 2013 as a Leader in their Magic Quadrant for General-Purpose Disk Arrays, and we have remained in the Leader quadrant for six years. NetApp has also been the Leader in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Solid-State Arrays since 2016.

We’ve taken great care to listen to our partners and to respond to what we hear. This recognition reinforces that we’re doing the right thing.

IDC Marketscape Recognized NetApp as a Leader in Two Categories

In 2019, IDC Marketscape recognized NetApp as a Leader in Object Storage for our StorageGRID offering, which helps reduce the complexity of managing unstructured data while also drawing new insights from your data. It also offers scalable, hybrid multi-cloud capabilities without propriety APIs or vendor lock-in.

“NetApp's strength comes in the form of the company's core engineering strengths and the vast experience in the unstructured data space… Customers in need for simplicity and speed from their IT infrastructure should consider StorageGRID.” [iv]

In parallel, IDC Marketplace named NetApp a Leader in Scale-Out File-Based Storage. Instead of being recognized for a specific hardware platform, as was the case for most vendors in this category, NetApp was recognised for our NetApp ONTAP offering, our software that powers file-based storage across our portfolio.

“NetApp's extended product portfolio that includes Active IQ, StorageGRID, and HCI makes for a valuable proposition for existing and potential customers, providing its customers the flexibility to deploy ONTAP across on-premises and cloud, telemetry data to proactively maintain system health, and long-term low-cost storage.” [v]

As the pioneers of network-attached storage more than 25 years ago, we are thrilled to see our continuing innovation recognized by IDC.

NetApp is a Champion in the 2019 Canalys EMEA Channel Leadership Matrix

In December 2019, NetApp also achieved Champion status in the 2019 Canalys EMEA Channel Leadership Matrix. As Canalys explained:

“This year’s Champions…all show improvements in channel processes to drive simplicity and ease of doing business; they prioritize investments in partner profitability and business models; and demonstrate a commitment to maintaining or growing the share of revenue generated through partners.”[vi]

What’s even more remarkable is that NetApp also successfully maintained our Champion status from the previous year, which was an especially significant feat because, as Canalys explains, retaining status “requires a vendor to show year-on-year improvements in their already industry-leading partner engagement, as well as further increase channel investment.”

NetApp Continues to Transform: We Can Help You Do It Too

A core part of NetApp’s message to our partners and customers is that we want to make it easier to do business with NetApp. To me, part of that work involves increasing awareness of what we do and demonstrating that we are a dedicated business partner, committed to your success. We continue working hard to solve customer challenges and engage with partners in a way that supports our mutual success. Transformation is a continuous process—as we evolve, we look forward to helping you evolve too.