NetApp aims to boost all-flash consolidation with ASA C-Series

At this week's NetApp Insight event, the focus was on AI, ransomware mitigation and prevention, and the importance of a multi-cloud approach to managing data.

However, the most valuable part of the NetApp story might be something announced a couple months prior to the event.

At Google Cloud Next, NetApp and Google released Google Cloud NetApp Volumes. With that, NetApp accomplished one of its core corporate objectives: making its technology available as a first-party, native cloud storage service on AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud platform.

According to research by TechTarget's Enterprise Strategy Group, 88% of organizations agree that leveraging multiple public cloud providers delivers strategic benefits to their organizations. Multi-cloud data and the storage infrastructure that supports it are here to stay. NetApp's ability to deliver multi-cloud capability as an integrated, co-engineered service rather than as a separately applied storage as software deployment is poised to significantly simplify and accelerate multi-cloud operations.

At this week's event, NetApp introduced a new on-premises storage offering, while augmenting other elements of its portfolio, including the following:

• The ASA C-Series all-flash SAN array portfolio with QLC flash technology to drive down the cost of flash storage. This release is an expansion of NetApp's QLC storage strategy, building on its AFF C-series release earlier this year.
• Addition of the AFF C-Series to the ONTAP AI architecture to improve affordability and sustainability.
• Extension of NetApp's Ransomware recovery guarantee to all of its on-premises ONTAP-based storage systems, including NetApp AFF, ASA, and FAS.
• Enhancements to NetApp Keystone storage as a service, with a comprehensive set of performance and availability guarantees for customers to take advantage of.

By expanding its use of QLC -- or capacity flash -- technology, all-flash data center consolidation is more accessible; it is easier to replace legacy disk-based storage with a modern, cost-optimized all-flash option.

NetApp also showed how it is innovating to address a critical business concern: too many silos and too many different technologies and experiences, creating multi-cloud complexity that spans both cloud and on-premises infrastructure.

Simplification is essential across clouds and in the data center. Consolidating multiple physical legacy systems and management experiences must be a key part of any on-premises modernization and is vital to reducing the burden on IT pros.

The ASA C-Series and the AFF C-Series make NetApp flash technology more accessible, thereby improving on-premises consolidation. By combining a consistent API with NetApp's BlueXP offering, NetApp enables consolidation management of storage and data across locations as well.

When combined with NetApp's cloud storage offerings, the improved accessibility of NetApp flash technology increases in value in a hybrid cloud environment.

I wrote about the impact of QLC on hybrid cloud environments when NetApp announced the AFF C-series. The logic applies with the ASA C-Series.

The bottom line is nearly every business is now and will continue to be multi-cloud for the foreseeable future. Businesses need consistency and consolidation to simplify the burden of multi-cloud operations on and off premises. NetApp is innovating to deliver across all these dimensions.

Scott Sinclair is Practice Director with TechTarget's Enterprise Strategy Group, covering the storage industry.

Enterprise Strategy Group is a division of TechTarget. Its analysts have business relationships with technology vendors.