The Power of Cloud Computing: Where Do We Begin?

In a World of Generalists, It’s the Cloud Specialist Who Knows Where to Start

The world of cloud computing is a lot like your first day on the job. Everything is unfamiliar and a ton of information is thrown at you, including a list of deliverables and outcomes. Your passion to succeed is not in question, but how do you turn all that general data into a specific plan?

After many years working with partners and helping them unlock the best of cloud, I’ve learned that the key to success is the same as that belief you have on the first day of any new project. You’ve got the skills and the tools; all you need is someone who knows the ropes to point you in the right direction and narrow down the choices into a solid business case.

Defining Cloud: The Path to Cloud Specialization

On our team, we view cloud as a vehicle to partner success. It's delivering capability. It's diversifying the risk of the new and building trust. If you're a CIO, your board or the head of your company is likely asking you the question, ‘what are we doing with cloud?’

For instance, this question formed by Forrester Research says it all, “How would your cloud subscription cost profile impact your ability to react if your firm's revenues dropped by 5% or 10% and your CEO asks you to cut your tech budget by the same amount?”[1]

Defining that means narrowing down choices and sticking to a defined business case. Our partners are typically brought in before a business problem has been framed. End users look around their environments and know there are industry pressures or risks they're facing that they have to adapt to. But they haven't yet taken the time to do organizational reflection to sufficiently define what needs to change.

At NetApp, we're brought in at a macro level. We, in concert with our partners, pull together the core business stakeholders so that, across the board, it's a holistic solution. After all, you're not treating a workload; it's an ecosystem of capabilities and a conversation about workflow.

True innovation focuses on quality-of-life improvements, the end-user interactions that transform. We bring together what we're doing at the edge, what we're doing in the core, and what we're doing in cloud to provide that common user interface, that interaction with data that leads to the realization of a defined business goal.

Unlock the Best of Cloud: Powerful Doesn’t Have to Be Unfamiliar

We view the cloud as yet another way to unlock possibility. For end-users, it doesn't matter where their data is located, it's about using a familiar interface so there’s no barrier to entry. However, to a CIO, data locality makes all the difference in how performant applications run and the costs they incur while being used. We structure our portfolio to allow you to phase over to these new operational frameworks, so that you can trust how and where your data is stored and delivered.

The building blocks remain the same and everything is interconnected. It's all NetApp. You don't have to think through a different product, depending upon which cloud you play in.

We are in the industrial revolution for cloud, and NetApp is the first to have cloud software for all the hyperscaler clouds. NetApp cloud solutions function the same as on-prem, no matter which (or all) of the clouds you decide to adopt. You get much more efficiency and scale, significant cost savings, and you remove the fear of incorporating cloud into your overall IT environment.

That's how we approach the cloud. We democratize the enterprise so that it doesn't matter where you start. From a small mom and pop shop that wants to be able to incorporate a global marketplace into their go-to-market strategy, all the way up to a major manufacturer that has plants and raw materials located across the globe, we help unify and shrink the globe to one global marketplace.

Anywhere on that spectrum, we're democratizing the cloud, and we're really unlocking the best of our customers and the best of what they do, in the best location possible, at the best price.

Industry-Leading Means Leading with Data

In a world that is rapidly and fundamentally changing how we do business, data-driven digital transformation is a must. Demand more from cloud, embrace the best of both worlds, and continuously optimize for the future. It’s no longer a question of if, or even when, anymore. It’s a matter of survival, and that time is now.

In the manufacturing sector, for instance, margins today are slim. If operations are down for even 15 minutes in any given quarter, the company is no longer profitable. With the right go-to-cloud strategy we built resiliency in the data fabric for our customer to boost efficiencies, so that profitability rises to meet the increased demands. During the current pandemic, that’s more crucial than ever. Now, whenever there is a reduced number of people who can be on the floor at any given shift, there’s a profitability index high enough to avoid layoffs.

That’s the holistic approach that leads to human impact, which to me is the true end result that has always resonated. A volume or efficiency quotient is just ones and zeros on a disc or spreadsheet. At the end of the day, digital transformation makes a difference in people’s real lives. And that’s ultimately the best place to start.

[1] ZDNet, “The questions CIOs need to ask about their firm’s cloud application exposure,” https://www.zdnet.com/article/the-questions-cios-need-to-ask-about-their-firms-cloud-application-exposure/