If you think moving to the cloud is easy, you don’t know what you are in for. If migrating applications, data and processes can test your mettle, the lifecycle of IT operations in the cloud, especially a hybrid multi-cloud setup, can be a powder keg sitting next to a lighted candle – you are just waiting for the right around of wind to light that fuse.
According to NetApp, as enterprises acquire public cloud services to augment their existing on-premises data centres, these combined infrastructures become more disparate, inconsistent and fragmented over time. These multi-cloud silos are inherently more complex to manage due to dealing with multiple disparate environments.
"Organisations today are looking for flexibility both on-premises as well as across cloud providers and are investing in as-a-service consumption models to help achieve this," said Scott Sinclair, practice director at ESG.
To solve this dilemma, NetApp has launched a unified and consistent hybrid multi-cloud experience, that allows customers to run and manage a single platform that spans from on-premises to the world’s biggest public clouds.
He opined that with NetApp’s simplified management and consumption experience, organisations can enjoy improved security, manageability, speed of operations, and cost savings - ultimately allowing them to be more responsive to the growing needs of their business by delivering capabilities faster and keeping data available and protected no matter where it lives.
“As organisations today explore the promise of hybrid multi-cloud environments, they are keen to avoid complexity, security, and cost-efficiency challenges,” said Ronen Schwartz, senior vice president, Cloud Volumes Service at NetApp.
Sanjay Rohatgi, senior vice president and general manager, NetApp Asia Pacific & Japan, noted that complexity of management, security risks, and cumbersome migration of workloads to the cloud are the three main challenges of organisations across Asia Pacific over the last two years.
He added that NetApp is working with partners to speed up the deployment of these solutions to deliver a unified and consistent hybrid multi-cloud experience for customers.
What did NetApp announce?
By delivering everything "as a service," NetApp simplifies and optimises hybrid cloud environments with new capabilities, including NetApp Keystone is a subscription-based hybrid cloud Storage-as-a-Service (STaaS) that enables organisations flexibly move workloads to and from the cloud in a single contract.
In addition to managing and monitoring data storage, protection, governance and tiering across multi-cloud environments, Cloud Manager can now manage Keystone services, track software licenses, monitor infrastructure health and provide proactive recommendations that optimize costs and data protection with automated actions.
According to Sinclair, NetApp's approach with Keystone is targeted at the need for hybrid cloud simplicity and flexibility that allows users to accelerate their IT objectives with management, orchestration, and billing wrapped into a single subscription and experience.
“Keystone's transferable subscription model also supports future cloud migration planning to any major cloud provider, with enterprise-level storage capability and integrated data protection," he added.
