A SCRIPT FOR MID-MARKET SUCCESS

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Updated : August 24, 2014 0:0  ,
By Editor

img109NetApp’s SMB strategy includes partnering to deliver the functionality and value of Enterprise Data Management Solutions which are ideal for mission-critical IT applications to the Mid-Market cost effectively. Fadi Kanafani, Regional Director for the Middle East, North Africa and Pakistan at NetApp speaks about the company’s focus areas 

Please discuss your unified storage approach?

As Big Data creates an ever-growing need for storage, efficient storage solutions are required to cater to the exponential market demand. Storage is a key conversation in most businesses regionally, although our strategies differ based on the kind of storage requirements individual companies are looking for. For example, shared-IT enterprise storage requires data management, virtualisation and cloud integration capabilities while big data requires high-performance, dedicated storage with data management being performed at the application layer.

Overall, cloud and flash storage solutions are leading the way; organizations in the region are migrating to cloud solutions and services at an unprecedented rate, while flash technologies are gaining popularity in order to drive better performance and greater consolidation of projects. NetApp is uniquely positioned to provide solutions for both through our varied portfolio, including our Clustered Data ONTAP universal data management platform, the new flash-accelerated FAS8000 series, and wide channel network in the region.

Discuss your scalable storage solutions for SMB segment customers?

Converged systems are ideal for small and medium-size businesses in need of easy-to-deploy solutions that consolidate application and data requirements, while providing greater value for their data center budgets. For example, FlexPod Express (a joint offering by NetApp and Cisco) provides a single, convenient, converged platform to manage the entire SME data infrastructure. It reduces the number of servers and storage capacity required for applications, simplifies overall infrastructure, optimizes architecture and accelerates deployment times, hence letting SMEs streamline their servers and storage to build a cost-effective IT infrastructure.

Discuss your strategy towards flash based storage arrays?

NetApp believes that flash is more than a technology, it’s an agenda. NetApp maximizes the value of flash across the entire compute, network, and storage stack with the industry’s most comprehensive flash portfolio, improving efficiency and accelerating business-critical application performance. With “no one size fits all” approach to flash, we believe that customers will deploy the technology at every layer in the stack to solve a wide variety of challenges.

For customers requiring the high performance and low latency of flash along with the enterprise reliability and extensive data management capabilities of Data ONTAP, all-flash configurations of the FAS8000 are available. For example, all-flash configurations of the FAS8080 EX and FAS8060 provide an ideal solution for desktop virtualization deployments with high IOPS and low latency requirements or large database workloads.  By offering a broad portfolio including both hybrid and all-flash storage offerings, NetApp is enabling IT organizations to optimize the level of performance, efficiency, and scalability to meet their specific needs.