“Make it harder for us”: Four words that IT teams will never say

How many of your friends or family members are members of IT staff? You know, the folks who are responsible for day-to-day operations to ensure that IT services are smoothly delivered.

One year ago today, during the start of the pandemic and amid many shelter-in-place orders, they were probably still going into the office.

Why? Because they were making sure that critical front-line workers and industries (healthcare, emergency services, food distribution, communication networks) had access. My brother, a system administrator for a major Texas telco, saw his workdays stretch and his “on-call” availability requirements almost double.

For him and his 70-or-so IT operations colleagues—and for many IT teams across the globe—2020 was one of the most demanding years they can recall in their long careers. Time at work was truly intense and time with family was cherished.

How can we, in the IT industry, help make these unsung heroes’ lives a little easier, and lighten the heavy load that they carry?

At NetApp, operational efficiency and simplicity have been key design tenets since our founding over 20 years ago. Our customers embraced Network Appliance^® initially not because we had the best performance, or even interoperability. It was because we were easy to deploy and use—almost appliance-like.

Fast-forward to 2021, and the innovation and investments we’ve made in our NetApp^®ONTAP^® ecosystem have provided tens of thousands of IT workers with tangible, time-saving benefits help them get back some of the time that they cherish.

Hear from Kim Stevenson, senior vice president and general manager for NetApp Foundational Data Services, discuss Simplicity365.

And learn more on our Simplicity365 webpage.