NetApp and Microsoft partnership drives innovation in customer experience

There’s nothing like a crisis to create a laser focus on results. That’s what the pandemic did to the pace of cloud migrations, which are said to have accelerated by as much as 70%. Fence-sitters leapt into action to mobilize their workforces, to migrate to the cloud, and to secure their data.

Microsoft has been well positioned to take advantage of the accelerated need. MSCloudNews reported that Azure revenue growth was 50% in Q2 and Q3 2021, 51% in Q4, and 50% again in Q1 2022.

The research firm Canalys also looked at cloud infrastructure spending globally. Canalys found that businesses worldwide spent a record $53.5 billion on cloud infrastructure in Q4 2021 alone, for a year-end total of $191.7 billion—almost $50 billion ahead of 2020. According to Canalys, Microsoft Azure accounted for 22% of that $53.5 billion.

Spanning more than two decades, the Microsoft and NetApp partnership has put us in an enviable position against this backdrop. During that time, we have developed a strong partnership that’s built on mutual trust, respect, and success. Microsoft even uses NetApp® technology internally. We share a vision for partnering with the best to deliver the best in customer experience. That is exactly why we put our heads together to coengineer Azure NetApp Files.

Azure NetApp Files is a fully managed, Microsoft first-party file storage service. We combine the benefits of Azure with proven and trusted NetApp ONTAP® technology to simplify migration of previously unmigratable mission-critical workloads. Now you can easily migrate SAP HANA, high-performance computing (HPC), VMware, virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), and complex databases such as Oracle and SQL Server.

As just one detailed example, discover the advantages of using Azure NetApp Files with SQL Server.

Customers trust us to help them migrate these workloads in record time, with the performance, flexibility, reliability, and scalability that they need. So, it’s no surprise that Azure NetApp Files has become the fastest-growing Azure service ever.

But we never rest on our laurels.

Azure NetApp Files Datastores for Azure VMware Solution (AVS) is coming soon to help you better match your storage to your needs, while significantly reducing costs. How? By enabling you to create NFS datastores by using Azure VMware APIs to mount those datastores directly to the AVS cluster. Your costs will dramatically reduce because you will require fewer AVS nodes for your storage-intensive workloads.

NetApp continues to innovate new solutions to help customers like you maximize performance and efficiency while optimizing cost. In addition to Azure NetApp Files, we have numerous solutions available in the Azure Marketplace, with more being developed all the time.

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP is a complete ONTAP storage service that runs in Azure. Cloud Volumes ONTAP helps you optimize your cloud storage performance while enhancing data protection, security, and compliance. With Cloud Volumes ONTAP, you can also optimize costs, accelerate time to market, and realize the true value of the cloud quickly and easily.

NetApp Cloud Backup service delivers reliable and cost-effective backup and restore capabilities to seamlessly protect and archive both Cloud Volumes ONTAP data in Azure and ONTAP data on premises. Simple to activate, to automate, and to scale, Cloud Backup service works with unstructured data, Oracle and SQL databases, and virtual machines.

In addition to Cloud Volumes ONTAP and Cloud Backup, we offer several other Azure Marketplace solutions. To help you monitor and optimize your data storage, we offer NetApp Cloud Manager, Cloud Insights, Cloud Data Sense (formerly Cloud Compliance), and Spot by NetApp. To easily manage and/or migrate data storage, we offer NetApp Virtual Desktop Service (VDS), Global File Cache, Cloud Sync service, Cloud Tiering, and Astra™ Control.

When it comes to storing data in the cloud, you get industry-leading solutions—developed with the best partners—and superior options for cost savings.

Explore NetApp services for Azure