Netapp’s strong position and unchallenged authority in Data Management, coupled with its Data Fabric strategy and large umbrella of Flash, HCI and hybrid cloud solutions is enabling them to help Indian customers meet business requirements and face challenges across their storage infrastructure.
From an overall storage growth point of view, how was the calendar year 2018 from a global and India market perspective?
Global IT spending is continuously increasing. As per Gartner, India’s DC Infrastructure Hardware spending projected an increase of 2.6% when compared to 2017, totaling up to US$2.7 Bn in 2018. Companies are now consciously moving towards hybrid cloud infrastructure and AI-driven solutions to simplify management of applications in order to accelerate digital transformation.
We believe data is the lifeblood of an organization and in order to attain its true value, organizations must understand how to harness power of this data with its seamless movement across environments. Through our solutions, we are enabling our existing customers, who have been using traditional storage solutions, to move into the application of flash arrays, hybrid cloud and hyper-converged infrastructures to handle mixed workloads. In fact, the worldwide public cloud services market is projected to grow 17.3% in 2019 to total $206.2 billion, up from $175.8 billion in 2018, according to Gartner.
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“Today’s CIOs are mainly concerned about whether to store their data in private/public/hybrid cloud and efficient data management; and NetApp with its data fabric strategy, is effectively helping customers manage their data across hybrid infrastructure.”
Kaushal Veluri
Director of Channels & Alliances
NetApp India & SAARC
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How was NetApp’s performance for this calendar year from a global as well as India perspective?
Globally, NetApp is transitioning to a data management company from a pure-play storage company. We have many new offerings ranging from flash solutions to hyper-converged infrastructures. India is emerging as a top hybrid cloud market with 30-40% enterprises adopting Hybrid cloud. From NetApp perspective, India is a large market to be counted as one of the top five in Asia-Pacific and we see the region with increasing opportunity.
According to IDC’s worldwide enterprise storage tracker we are typically the #2 vendor. We have also been recognized as a leader in the 2018 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Solid-State Arrays, for the third year in a row and our latest HCI solution has been named an Evolutionary Disruptor in the market by Gartner.
What activities did you undertake that differentiated you from your competitors and helped you increase market share?
NetApp is a cloud infrastructure technology solutions provider to enterprise customers on one hand and on the other, it also helps them set up hybrid cloud by working with cloud providers like Netmagic or Sify. We partnered with AWS, Azure and Google Cloud and we are today the only player to have partnered with all the leading hyperscalers in the world. The company has improved its position compared to the previous year.
Currently, there are several players who are addressing the same geography and segments as us, yet we remain the only player who has identified data management as our core expertise. Our positioning is unique and focused making us the data authority in the Hybrid Cloud world.
How was your customer acquisition growth? What were the customer engagement programs for the year and what was the outcome?
To empower APAC customers, we launched a Data Visionary Engineering Centre (DVEC) in Bangalore in May 2018. The DVEC has enabled customers to learn more about latest industry trends, flash storage, hybrid cloud and modernized data centre technologies.
During the NetApp Insight held at Las Vegas in October 2018, new solutions across hybrid cloud and multi-cloud environments were announced such as NetApp Cloud Insights, Azure NetApp Files, Cloud Volumes Service, Cloud Volumes ONTAP, NetApp HCI, SaaS Backup for Microsoft Office 365, and NetApp Data Availability Services. These solutions enable customers to deliver data-driven business outcomes for applications. We are focused on Flash, HCI and hybrid cloud solutions and through these we help our customers meet their business requirements and face challenges pertaining to given circumstances. Today’s CIOs are mainly concerned about whether to store their data in private/public/hybrid cloud and efficient data management. And NetApp, with its data fabric strategy, is effectively helping customers to manage their data across hybrid cloud infrastructure.
Which verticals embraced your solutions maximum and why? What kind of revenue/ market share growth did you achieve this year?
The year has seen some dramatic shifts as digital transformation has become a key criterion across industries. For NetApp, the drivers of growth in the enterprise segment have been the BFSI sector followed by IT/ITeS, whilst growth in the government segment has been primarily driven by the partnerships to promote various Smart City initiatives.
We have given a consistent and strong performance over the years. This year’s Q2 results reflect the clear differentiation of our technology and the strength of our business model. Our net revenues grew 7% year-over-yearin Q2 2019. Our customers’ growing commitment to NetApp and value of our Data Fabric strategy are helping us deliver strong results in the industry.
