NETAPP: Storage efficiency is a winning weapon

NetApp has been a "red Lion" for virtualization and the cloud computing market in recent times. NetApp's strategic alliance with Cisco and VMware launched a virtual Dynamic Data center solution, the first shot in the cloud computing market.

12~14 A cloud service provider enough

Liu Baohua: IDC's report shows that NetApp's share of the global storage market has risen to second place. What is the reason for NetApp's rapid growth over the past few years? When NetApp becomes a leader from a chaser, will the positioning and strategy of the company's future development change?

Simon Green: Over the past 12 months, the global economic environment has changed dramatically. Although the storage market has been hit by the international financial crisis, customer demand is still prevalent. Because of it budget tightening, customers want to use some new technology to tide over the current difficulties, further improve storage utilization, reduce costs. In the next 2-3 years, the Global cloud computing market is likely to 12~14 a large telecoms operator offering cloud services. What NetApp is now doing is working more closely with these carriers to meet this new change to meet the requirements of technology and application aggregation.

Specifically, on a technical level, NetApp is looking to provide better technology for these cloud service providers so they can provide a greater service. At the application level, NetApp is committed to creating a better collaborative ecosystem, strengthening partnerships with a number of world-renowned system integrators, and enabling NetApp to have strong marketing and execution capabilities; NetApp will also strengthen its collaboration with technology partners such as VMware, Cisco, Citrix, and Microsoft.

When it comes to NetApp's increased market share, on the one hand, changes in the overall market environment, on the other, NetApp's advocacy of storage efficiency has a better resonance with markets and customers. More and more customers are looking for technologies that will yield greater ROI on existing technology architectures, and by deploying NetApp storage technology, they can improve storage efficiency and adapt to changes in real economic environments.

Liu Baohua: From NetApp's earnings, NAS products account for 48% of the company's total revenue. Can you predict what the ideal revenue ratio will be for NetApp's product lines in the future? What is the position of the cloud storage product, and will its revenue be the main support for the company's performance?

Simon Green: From the point of view of sales, the emergence of cloud storage does not make much difference to the company's existing product mix and revenue ratios. Companies such as Yahoo, Telstra, BT and T system have deployed cloud computing systems and are starting to provide external cloud services. Their cloud computing systems are built on NetApp's technical architecture. These users chose NetApp because the NetApp storage system is cost-effective and efficient, and can meet all of the user's application requirements on a single system.

At present, it is hard to say how much the cloud computing technology can contribute to NetApp sales, depending on a number of factors, the main factor being how successful cloud computing can be in the future. As mentioned above, there may be 12~14 large cloud service providers in the future. NetApp focuses on providing the optimized technical architecture for these cloud service providers. NetApp has now launched a solution for virtual Dynamic Data centers. For example, we have a big global customer. Previously, 40% of the products in its storage system came from NetApp. Today, it chooses to outsource it applications to cloud service providers, and the cloud service provider ultimately decides to build all applications on NetApp platforms. As a result, NetApp's products have changed from 40% to 100% overnight. There are many more examples like this.

Liu Baohua: When I went to the United States, we found that the cloud computing market in the United States was developing much faster than in China. Many Chinese users are still skeptical of the cloud's viability, and America already has many successful cases of public cloud. VMware has been working on a unified standard in the cloud computing market. Do you think there will be a unified standard for future cloud computing?

Simon Green: Objectively speaking, cloud computing is difficult to have a uniform standard. Because the entire cloud computing technology architecture includes a lot of content, such as server, storage, network and a variety of applications. It is not a technology, but involves all aspects of the problem, including data backup, security, etc., so it is difficult to have a unified standard.

There are some typical cloud-computing success stories in the US, but these are just a few examples, and it's hard to state that cloud computing is already a very mature market, with only a few examples. In the case of T system, they have been very successful in cloud computing, with sales of $1 billion trillion in a single quarter through cloud services. However, not all customers reach the level of T system. Some large telecoms operators are still on the sidelines about cloud computing. This shows that the maturity of technology does not mean that the entire application market has been very mature. For the future development of cloud computing, it is more important to see whether the business model is mature.

Liu Baohua: From the current situation, some storage vendors can not only provide cloud storage solutions, but also provide cloud-based operational services. What do you think of such a new business model?

Simon Green: I still think that in the future there will eventually be 12~14 large cloud service providers around the world, and most of these cloud service providers will be telecoms operators. One of the most immediate reasons is whether cloud services can be scaled to a large extent in relation to network bandwidth and infrastructure, and large telecommunications operators have an innate advantage in this regard. Some companies may also be able to provide a particular kind of cloud services, such as e-mail services, but eventually these companies may be merged by large telecom operators.

Liu Baohua: There are some arguments about the private cloud and the public cloud. Some people think that the private cloud will develop faster in the future, while the public cloud development is relatively slow. According to your judgment, what is the future of the cloud computing market? What is the future of the private cloud?

Simon Green: Private Cloud and public cloud will coexist. Some large enterprises may build their own private cloud first. The private cloud primarily provides cloud services to different business units and branches within the enterprise. My personal view is that in the future, the proportion of private cloud in the cloud computing market may be 40%, while the public cloud service accounts for 60%.

A Fortune magazine survey of CIOs showed that 80% of customers said they would put 60% of it businesses on the outside cloud over the next 18 months. Thus, migrating to the external cloud is a general trend. One of the key factors affecting the migration of users to the external cloud is the security of the cloud service, which includes both the customer's confidence and the confidence of the user in the new business model of the external cloud. In addition, the price of cloud services is also an important factor.

Liu Baohua: Do you have the fear that the enterprise will reduce the purchase of storage devices after a large number of public cloud adoption. Storage vendors to promote cloud computing and cloud services, in the expansion of new markets, will not be the cloud of the sword hurt?

Simon Green: I don't think that customers can reduce the need for storage after using the cloud architecture, and the main reason is that the amount of data stored is the same regardless of whether the cloud architecture is adopted or not. Whether customers adopt cloud computing architectures can only affect how data is stored, without affecting the creation of data.

Integration is the general trend

Liu Baohua: Intel is now moving aggressively into the storage market, and has raised the issue of architecture convergence and standardization, which is the desire to extend the standard architecture of the x86 server to the storage system, merging servers with storage. Is this going to be a trend in the future?

Simon Green: I can't fully agree with this view. The server's architecture may be standardized and disks may be standardized, but for information management it covers far more than disk. The CPU architecture is standardized, and traditional server vendors can, of course, provide standardized servers based on this. But for the storage system, it is not a simple disk problem, but more importantly how to manage all the information on the disk, how to do backup, archive. From this point of view, it is difficult to say that the storage system will appear a standardized architecture, but can be made a single architecture.

Liu Baohua: When it comes to virtualization, we also note that NetApp is promoting a virtualization commitment project around the world that promises to increase storage efficiencies to a higher level after using NetApp storage virtualization solutions. Why does NetApp propose such a strategy? What is the current user feedback?

Simon Green: Our goal is to make it clear that we want to increase our customer's awareness of the storage efficiency concept that NetApp advocates, and through a commitment program that enables customers to know that NetApp can help customers significantly improve the utilization of existing storage systems. A lot of practice has shown that, with this plan, customers are discovering that the actual storage efficiencies are rising far beyond the 50% target of NetApp's commitment.

You've also asked why NetApp's market share is expanding rapidly, which is closely related to our highly advocated storage efficiency strategy. This strategy gives customers a better understanding of the value of NetApp in improving storage efficiency, and then trusts NetApp to select NetApp.

The alliance is for me.

Liu Baohua: We note that many storage vendors have adopted alliances in promoting cloud storage and virtualization, such as VMware, Cisco and EMC as Strategic Alliances (VCE), and NetApp has teamed up with Cisco and VMware. The overlap between the two alliances seems high because the other two partners are the same except for the storage section. What do you think of the competitive relationship between the two alliances?

Simon Green: This problem can be analyzed from two aspects of marketing and actual effect. In fact, in the past one months, many customers have asked me the same question. Whether it's the VCE Alliance or the Alliance of VMware, Cisco and NetApp, the key question is whether you can deliver the actual product or solution to your customers and benefit the customer.

NetApp's cooperative strategic alliance with Cisco and VMware has delivered many real-world solutions to customers. Three companies have invested and collaborated in engineering research to ensure that the solutions offered by three of vendors offer higher value to customers. As far as I know, there are a number of cases where customers have succeeded in using this Trinity solution. What we need to improve is to continue to strengthen the market and to make more customers understand what NetApp, Cisco and VMware can bring to them. This is a question of executive power.

Liu Baohua: NetApp recently announced an alliance with Fujitsu. It has been judged that the partnership between NetApp and Fujitsu seems to be closer than the cooperative relationship between NetApp and IBM. What kind of partnership does NetApp and Fujitsu have?

Simon Green: So far, NetApp has worked very closely with Fujitsu in Europe and the Japanese market. The impact of NetApp's collaboration with Fujitsu on the development of NetApp in markets such as the US, China and India is not yet well established. But one thing's for sure, NetApp and Fujitsu are strong, and the partnership is healthy and NetApp's products are a significant part of Fujitsu's storage solutions.

However, this does not mean that NetApp and Fujitsu and NetApp are either better than IBM, because they are two different modes of cooperation. In the future, NetApp will strengthen its collaboration with Fujitsu in its niche, and the scope of the collaboration between NetApp and IBM may be broader. However, NetApp adheres to the principle that NetApp's collaboration with Fujitsu will not be at the expense of other alliances or partnerships.

You can't lose your enthusiasm.

Liu Baohua: NetApp has been rated the best employer for seven consecutive years by Fortune magazine in the United States. NetApp jumped to the top of Fortune magazine's best Employer rankings in 2009. An enterprise in the process of rapid growth, employees often have to bear greater pressure, and NetApp over the past few years has not only maintained a high rate of growth, and has been highly recognized by employees. How does NetApp reconcile the relationship between enterprise development and employee interests?

Simon Green: Why can't a fast-growing company be the best employer? The key to NetApp's success is that business management spends a lot of time interacting with its employees. NetApp usually asks a new employee the question: Are you willing to set a high goal for yourself? If the person is unwilling to set a high goal for himself, NetApp may not be an ideal choice for him.

Through communication with our employees, we find that many employees are very proud of their achievements and are excited about the goals they set and are passionate about achieving them. NetApp wants to create a platform for every employee to play with, rather than simply by offering free lunches or mineral water to attract staff.

Another important aspect is how we maintain and develop the core of corporate culture, namely honesty and integrity, outstanding business performance, and openness. We want all employees to keep their enthusiasm every day, whether they are waking up every morning or visiting a customer. The enthusiasm of the staff can affect the customers, customers will be willing to work with such a passionate company and employees to deal with, invisible will bring us more business.

Liu Baohua: I have a friend who ranks about 400 in the Forbes list in China, but he told me that his life is not happy, because his life is full of work, pressure is very big, so that got enteritis. We know that you are not only good at all kinds of sports, but also take time to travel and relax with your family every year. How do you balance career and family relationships?

Simon Green: Frankly, I don't think I'm doing a good job of balancing my career and family life, but I can do better. The key point is that you must spend your time on what you think is most important. In fact, being busy is not a difficult thing, it is difficult when you can stop to review the past and make a good summary.

Journalist Notes

Happy Life Happy Work

In the past one months, Simon Green has become a veritable trapeze, with 3.5 weeks of traveling between Singapore, India, Japan and the United States. In the interview, although his face with a trace of tiredness, but the thinking is very agile, and in answer to the question is very frank, do not avoid contradictions.

If summed up in one sentence, Simon Green is a standard NetApp. The core of NetApp's corporate culture is openness, passion and integrity, which are fully embodied in Simon Green. Simon Green is still a man of temperament, in the interview when he spoke of his beloved family was a little excited, orbital even slightly moist. "It may be hard to imagine that when I travel with my family, I will put my hands on the body and lock it in the safe," he said. That's what I did last year, and I'll do it again this year. After a more than 10-day holiday, I was able to devote myself energetically to my work. Simon Green told reporters.

With the rapid economic growth, competitive pressure is increasing, many people's pain index also continues to increase. The survey found that the higher the company's top level, the greater the pain index. "Pain and happiness" has become a mantra for many people to comfort themselves. NetApp's unique corporate culture makes every employee grow up with the enterprise in the process, can enjoy the full devotion of the sense of achievement, and maintain the enthusiasm and concern for the family, this seems invaluable.