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Top Moments From NetApp Insight 2019

NetApp says its data fabric strategy has come to life. At NetApp Insight 2019, executives discussed what’s next.

Four years ago, NetApp CEO George Kurian presented his plans for the future: It would be a hybrid cloud world and NetApp’s data fabric strategy would be at the center of it all. This week in Las Vegas at Insight 2019, Kurian said that vision has come to life.

“We promised and we’ve delivered to enable you to transform your IT,” CEO George Kurian said on stage. He kicked off Insight with the announcement of Keystone, a consumption-based hybrid, multi-cloud platform that makes it, “easy to consume and easy to operate NetApp capabilities.”

NetApp has had a bumpy start to the fiscal year, missing earnings projections two quarters in a row. However, partners say those numbers don’t tell the true story. Partner John Woodall says NetApp is the best-kept secret in tech and believes Keystone only adds to its story.

“They’re doing things today on-prem in the cloud… the whole hybrid multi cloud discussion that I don’t see many of any of their competitors offering,” said John Woodall, VP of Engineering at IAS, a Palo Alto, Calif.-based solution provider.

Partners make up 80 percent of NetApp’s overall business and this year NetApp designed its flagship conference around the partner community. Channel Chief Chris Lamborn says the message for partners centers around simplicity.

“We are announcing simplicity around how we help partners quote and get into the marketplace. Consumption solutions that enable them to sell with a cloud-like experience and get even more security alignments into our public cloud integrators.”

Along with the Keystone program and simplified customer experience, NetApp announced a number of updates throughout its portfolio, like the integration of more AI into its products and cloud-agnostic DevOps leveraging Kubernetes.

For a deeper look into NetApp Insight, watch CRN’s video included in this article.