Software defined innovation for private clouds at scale
Kim Stevenson
This week, NetApp announced a major innovation to help customers looking for cloud-like operational simplicity built on the infrastructure of their choice.
SolidFire Enterprise Software Defined Storage (eSDS) delivers NetApp SolidFire’s Element software decoupled from and independent of the underlying hardware.
Many customers are building private clouds at huge global scale. They want to deploy and manage their preferred hardware vendor (we’ve optimized for HPE in the initial release of SolidFire eSDS) to run their infrastructure, and run the storage as software, allowing them to gain further efficiency, standardization and control over their operations. SolidFire eSDS gives them the flexible infrastructure choice they require AND the guaranteed performance, automation, QoS and scale-out capabilities of the SolidFire eSDS software.
Of course, we will continue to offer SolidFire storage systems. Many customers want the convenience of letting NetApp do the integration of hardware and software. But for those who need the flexibility of software defined, SolidFire eSDS supports their unique requirements. It is a great example of the kind of customer-centric innovation people have come to expect from NetApp, and another example of the software innovation we have been delivering for decades.
SolidFire eSDS is a major milestone in the software-defined future we’re building across the NetApp portfolio. SolidFire eSDS is delivered as containers and will be an important foundational enabler as part of Project Astra going forward. SolidFire’s proven innovation will be increasingly portable across our portfolio and third-party platforms, enabling the acceleration of next-generation applications with cloud-like operational simplicity. We’re bringing enterprise data services to the cloud, and the simplicity and flexibility of cloud on premises.
Learn more about how SolidFire eSDS, and the rich capabilities of all of the new solutions we announced today, can help customers unlock the best of cloud.
Kim Stevenson
Kim Stevenson is Senior Vice President and General Manager of NetApp’s Foundational Data Services Business Unit (FDSBU), our largest business unit and helping to lead the charge into a new technology era. Kim most recently served as a senior executive with Lenovo as Senior Vice President and General Manager for the Data Center Group. With diverse experience spanning finance, services, and marketing, COO and CIO leadership roles at Intel, IBM, EDS, and HPE, and having served on numerous boards of directors for leading tech innovators, Kim brings a truly unique and well-rounded perspective to NetApp. She uses this diverse experience to tackle the business challenges customers care about most and simplify the overall IT experience for a world that is growing only more complex. Kim has won numerous awards including Silicon Valley Business Journal's Best CIO and Evanta Top 10 Breakaway Leader, Huffington Post's Most Social CIO as well as the CIO 100 award by CIO.com. She was named the Woman of Excellence Digital Trailblazer by the National Association of Female Executives (NAFE). In 2015, she won the Forbes CIO Innovation Award. Currently serving on the board of Boston Private Financial Holdings, Inc. and Skyworks Solutions Inc., Kim holds a Master of Business Administration degree from Cornell University and a Bachelor of Science degree from Northeastern University. In her free time, Kim is an avid tennis player and enjoys kayaking and paddle boarding.
