Busting myths and taking names, part 1: Does migrating enterprise apps to the cloud mean sacrificing performance?

In this blog series, we’re busting open four pervasive myths about enterprise applications.

Today we take on Myth #1: Migrating enterprise apps to the cloud means sacrificing performance.

Every company out there is trying to do three things: make money, save money, and stay out of the headlines. The cloud can reduce up-front costs and capex, but the true value in cloud actually lies elsewhere. The biggest value of cloud computing is the ability to make money—to grow top-line revenue through increased agility, insights, and access to analytics and artificial intelligence.

When it comes to enterprise applications, such as SAP, Oracle, and Microsoft SQL Server, having elastic resources can be particularly helpful. These applications can experience dramatic spikes in consumption at different times of the year. You might have additional demands around the end of the month, quarter, or year. Or seasonal peaks, such as the holiday shopping season. Or at unexpected times, such as when the competition launches a new product or service and you need to respond quickly. The cloud enables you to be extra responsive in bursts when needed.

Despite the benefits of the cloud, many mission-critical workloads are still running on premises. Plenty of organizations feel stuck choosing between the agility of the cloud and their performance needs.

Certainly, if you have latency-sensitive applications that require submicrosecond response times, you may want to keep them on premises. However, enterprise customers could have hundreds, even thousands, of applications, and just a small handful of those applications would actually need submicrosecond response times. For most applications, submillisecond response times are more than adequate.

The truth? You don’t have to choose between performance and moving enterprise apps to the cloud. NetApp delivers on-premises or better performance with submillisecond latency for scale-up and scale-out workloads in the world’s largest clouds. And now, NetApp^® solutions are certified for SAP HANA production databases in both Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services.

In fact, when SAP was looking for an infrastructure partner for the launch of HANA Enterprise Cloud, they chose Azure NetApp Files to deliver significant improvements in processing speed, product time to market, and security for SAP customers.

According to this SAP case study, As a longtime NetApp customer, SAP also had experience with NetApp AFF arrays and NetApp ONTAP^® data management software. SAP was confident that these products would deliver the speed, efficiency, and reliability that would allow HANA Enterprise Cloud to be the preeminent infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) solution.

Performance is now table stakes. Today, it’s all about reliable performance. Performance you can depend on at year end or on Cyber Monday. It’s about flexibility versus lock-in. Right-sizing versus overprovisioning. Rapid scaling and business responsiveness. Management that’s as easy in the cloud as it is on premises. Backups that are faster and less expensive because you have less data to move. And restores that are lightning fast.

These are just a few of the reasons why enterprises like Coke One North America choose NetApp for their enterprise applications in the cloud.

The majority of Coca-Cola bottlers in North America depend on Coke One North America (CONA) to handle their IT needs, and CONA Services supports them with one of largest scale-out SAP HANA instances in the world. It’s a 24/7 business that depends on reliable performance and the flexibility that only the cloud can provide. Azure NetApp Files “delivers millions in savings and missions in growth ” with greater insights and agility.

So is performance a problem for enterprise apps in the cloud? Not with NetApp. Learn more about our SAP solutions and check out this infographic to see what other myths you can bust by partnering with us.