NetApp And Commvault: Across ‘Any Hybrid Multi Cloud’

By Jeffrey Leeds

As the Commvault relationship owner at NetApp, I was delighted to be asked to guest blog the second of this series, kicked off by Nigel Tozer in his blog about NetApp’s “across every cloud” message.

With the vast majority of enterprise organizations either deploying or planning a hybrid multi cloud strategy, I’m going to make that my focus here.

Hybrid cloud – a strategy for today and tomorrow

The benefits for hybrid multi cloud look obvious, such as the agility, availability and elasticity that cloud brings, plus there are performance and economic advantages brought about by running the right workload in the right cloud. So if you’re thinking of running or extending this model, you’re not alone. Dave Bartoletti of Forester says 74 percent of enterprises already describe their IT strategy in this way1.

In practice, though, organizations need to determine what mix of on-premises versus cloud they need to use for themselves.

If you’re like most organizations, you may be struggling with some legacy infrastructure or systems that are tough to integrate with a hybrid approach, slowing your time to market. Your flexibility may also be constrained, increasing your costs.

Then when you consider the multi cloud question, skills, security, governance and cost start to become significant blips on your radar. So how do you get the hybrid multi cloud benefits today, while exploiting your current investment to get your business ready for tomorrow?

This is where partnering with NetApp to build your data fabric can really makes a difference. The right data fabric helps you manage all of your current on-premises data, and extend to cloud, IoT, machine learning, artificial intelligence (AI) and mission-critical workloads as needed. It also simplifies data management, provides reliable high-performance and rock-solid availability through replication and snapshot technologies, which all work seamlessly across multiple clouds.

Protecting your data fabric – everywhere

What I find really exciting about our relationship with Commvault is the unparalleled degree of integration. Among other things, Commvault provides central control for NetApp Snapshots and NetApp SnapMirror across the NetApp product portfolio, including ONTAP FAS/AFF, Cloud Volumes ONTAP, SolidFire, NetApp HCI and StorageGrid to seamlessly combine these features with VM and application integration, backup and recovery and disaster recovery (DR).

A data fabric built with NetApp takes the strain out managing your primary data. Commvault does the same for your recovery tier. NetApp HCI powers private cloud, and Commvault provides the rapid recovery and DR. NetApp gets your primary data to the cloud, and Commvault does the same for snapshots, backups and workloads/VMs. Cloud Volumes ONTAP protects your cloud data; Commvault protects your cloud workloads/VMs. The fact that Commvault also supports VM migrations to/from/between clouds is also incredibly useful to NetApp customers, as it has so many different use cases.

Two is easier than 10

Or 20. Or more. What do I mean? Well I guess it’s the final point I’d like to make in this blog, and it’s this: Much of the complexity and pain of modern IT boils down to the number of vendors required to “get the job done” for your business. For example, NetApp can help cut support costs by 67 percent2and the last Commvault customer survey, conducted by IDC, said that reduced complexity and IT overhead was a benefit of using Commvault software. By consolidating with NetApp and Commvault together, you also strip out a whole layer of integration and management challenges in one of the most difficult areas of IT – managing and controlling your data. On top of that huge benefit, you also get two industry-leading cloud toolsets available today, which takes away much of the pain of managing a hybrid multi cloud too.

What if you’re not a NetApp customer today? No problem. Commvault has your back until you find your way over to NetApp. If you already have a big NetApp investment it is worthwhile to see the highly engineered joint solutions we have that work right out of the box. Either way, we’re ready to welcome you, and happy to explain how Commvault makes migrating to NetApp easier.

Want to know more? Take a look at the infographic from ESG, which brings a third-party perspective on our relationship. Or if you prefer something more technical, you can listen to this recent Tech ONTAP podcast. You can also ask a specific question about our relationship, technologies or partner network This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. document.getElementById('cloakfb722b3bc16a0abf53d998f7d3861904').innerHTML = ''; var prefix = 'ma' + 'il' + 'to'; var path = 'hr' + 'ef' + '='; var addyfb722b3bc16a0abf53d998f7d3861904 = 'info' + '@'; addyfb722b3bc16a0abf53d998f7d3861904 = addyfb722b3bc16a0abf53d998f7d3861904 + 'commvault' + '.' + 'com'; var addy_textfb722b3bc16a0abf53d998f7d3861904 = 'directly to our friends at Commvault';document.getElementById('cloakfb722b3bc16a0abf53d998f7d3861904').innerHTML += ''+addy_textfb722b3bc16a0abf53d998f7d3861904+''; .

Jeffrey Leeds Sr. is the Alliance Manager, Global Data Protection Partnerships, for NetApp.

1 Multi-Cloud, Hybrid Cloud, and Cloud Spend — Statistics on Cloud Computing, March 2018

2 NetApp figures, details

3 Commvault IDC customer survey infographic, download the infographic